EARLY STAGE HOMOEOPATHIC OBSTETRICS


Regarding the public obstruction, doctor, the public arch– I cant put my hand in the proper way, but the public arch is something like that, and the head, as it comes down, catches on that public arch. It will go past, if you have a normal delivery; it will go like this, vertex of the head will pass through under the arch, but the bony structures, catch right on that.


The practice of obstetrics homoeopathically is a much more complicated part of the physicians work than is the same work from every other standpoint, and the ease of the expectant mother during her months of waiting, the ease and facility of her labor, and to a great extent the health of the coming generation depends on the guidance and homoeopathic care, which should begin before conception. However, most of the cases of pregnancy come under the physicians observation only when the patient begins to have some trouble, nausea and vomiting usually being the impelling factor.

Diet control, pelvic outlet determination, size, weight checking and control, blood pressure, and urine checking for sugar, albumen, etc., should all be routine procedures in every case and with every physician. In my practice some additional things are required. Breast and nipple examination with nipple development in case such is necessary, massage of abdominal muscles, and pituitary glandular supply during the last few months of pregnancy, being on the list of compulsory necessities.

During pregnancy the patient always depletes her own pituitary supply to give it to the child, and the oral administration of whole pituitary gland substance, 1 to 3 grains daily (enteric coated) for 2 to 4 months pre-delivery, will cut labor time one- half to three-fourths, and very few will have to undergo instrumental or caesarian deliveries.

One of the greatest causes of instrumental interference is slowing or stopping of progress in delivery because the skull of the foetus engages on the pubic arch. Most of these cases in which forceps are used could be remedies by using the kid slipper to smooth out the passage of the head over that obstruction, thus reducing forceps deliver cases by 90 percent or more. Proper homoeopathic care and treatment early in pregnancy will smooth the rough spots all along the way.

Some of the symptomatology of a few remedies is as follows:.

ALETRIS FARINOSA: Obstinate vomiting of pregnancy, indigestion with much debility, nausea and disgust for food, least food causes gastric distress, and pain. Frequent attacks of vertigo with fainting, sleepy all the time, emaciation, constipation.

ANACARDIUM: Morning nausea, with empty feeling in stomach, vomiting of food gives relief. Nausea worse before and after eating, better while eating. Weak digestion with fullness and distension of abdomen.

ARSENICUM: Vomiting after meals, and at night, with gastralgia. Burning pains, anguish, burning thirst, with diarrhoea after eating and drinking. Burning pains in mammae. Relief from motion.

CARBOLIC ACID: Vomiting with frantic headache and irritability, nausea nearly all morning, dull aching, uneasy feeling in stomach, torpor of bowels.

CUPRUM ARSENITE: Constant nausea, vomits everything, very weak, pulse full and quick. Spasmodic uterine pains.

CUPRUM METALLICUM: Frequent vomiting with agonizing and long continued pain and retching, frequent cramps in limbs. Great mental disquiet and restlessness, night and day.

CYCLAMEN: Loathing with nausea in mouth and throat. Feels as if the brain were in motion when leaning against something. Vertigo, objects turn in a circle about patient. Vision dim, with fiery sparks before the eyes. Fatty taste, fat food disagrees, wants no breakfast.

FERRUM ACETATE: Vomiting of food, with fiery red face, renewed vomiting after eating. All vomitus tastes sour and acrid; vomits blood.

IGNATIA: Great emptiness, qualmishness and weakness in gastric region, with flat taste. Abdominal distension after eating, hiccough, sour eructations, frequent regurgitation of food and of bitter fluid, vomits food at night which was eaten in evening. Empty retching, relieved by eating, copious lemon colored urine.

IPECACUANHA: One continued sense of nausea day and night, vomits fluids and solids undigested. Vomits large quantities of mucus or / and bile.

KALI CARBONICA: Nausea without vomiting. Coming on only during a walk, feeling as if patient could lie down anywhere and die. Vomiting and swoon-like loss of strength, very sleepy during a meal, much backache.

LACTIC ACID: Nausea and vomiting of sour substances, sour taste. No desire for, but nausea relieved by, eating breakfast. Gastric faintness, water brash of hot sour fluid. Hot, sour, acrid, eructations with burning from stomach to mouth.

NUX VOMICA: Nausea and vomiting with loss of appetite. Vomits sticky mucus and sour fluid. Restless sleep especially after 3 a.m. with nausea and vomiting in morning and great depression of spirit. Vomits food, bile, black or sour substance. Longing for alcoholic stimulants. Constipation.

PETROLEUM: Vomits bile, daytime diarrhoea only. Aggravated when riding, aversion to fats and meat, dizziness after slight meal.

PULSATILLA: Vomits evening or night of green slimy, bilious masses. Beating in pit of stomach. Flatulent colic evenings or at night, with frequent stools of white, green, or yellow mucus.

RHUS TOX: Putrid taste after the first mouthful, eructation and nausea, with inclination to vomit. Cramps in legs at night very severe. No appetite, or hunger without appetite.

SABADILLA: No relish for food till first morsel is taken, then eats a good meal. Horrid burning in stomach as if it would burn up into the throat. Sweet taste, frequent spitting of insipid water.

STAPHISAGRIA: Extreme hunger, even when the stomach is full. Sensation as if stomach were hanging down, relaxed, constant accumulation of water in the mouth.

TARANTULA: Loss of appetite, intense thirst, prostration, vomits after eating and getting out of bed, craving for raw food.

ZINCUM: Taste of blood in mouth, and terrible heartburn after eating sweets, eats greedily, cannot eat fast enough, feet fidgety.

BREA, CALIF.

DISCUSSION.

DR. BOWIE: I think the doctor spoke about preventing the use of forceps. Do you know that I believe that the use of forceps and the use of large doses of pituitary are the cause of more mental conditions which last the lifetime of the child, than anything else which occurs in the birth? There are doctors today who are using forceps on half of their cases. There are doctors today who use large doses of pituitary in every case. I have seen them give as much as 1-2 and even 2 cc. during the course of a single birth.

Now, a precipitate labor by large doses of pituitary may frequently result in pressure which the child is unable to ward off, and it leaves that child a mental defect. The same may occur with forceps. There is a great deal in having the right kind of forceps. I think the old Elliott forcep is probably as good as man that there are, but there is too much pressure and many of the doctors use continued pressure. They just remove the child with perhaps one or two blows, and it is too much for the child.

There are a lot of things to make you think, in this paper.

DR. FARIS: I should like to request Dr. Jackson to elaborate a little more what he said about the head hanging up on the pubic bone.

DR. WILSON: We have a surgeon in New York who has become quite eminent in his work on epilepsy and he remarked that the vast majority of the epileptic cases he has to operate, come from childbirth.

DR. JACKSON: I was very much in hopes that this would bring out some discussions and the paper really did what I desired to have it to.

Now, regarding the overdosing of pituitrin. I agree that overdosing of pituitrin is a very reprehensible thing to do, something that should never be done; however, pituitrin orally, as I suggested in my paper, is not an overdosing with pituitrin. It is supplying the difference between what the patient should have and what the patient is able to supply herself, and what she is supplying the child. If the patient is supplying 50 per cent of what she should normally have, I have tried to supply what I believe will be 50 per cent to balance that to a hundred per cent, or even.

Strange to say, the administration of that has never, in my experience–I have been using it for fifteen years now– produced one single pain, not even one single contraction, even during the pre-delivery time of three to four months, in many cases. It depends on the individual. If the individual is quite heavy, indicating that she is already a person with a pituitary deficiency, she gets three grains a day. If she is slender, showing that she is not a pituitary deficiency case, she usually gets only one grain a day, but if the patient is sort of moderately heavy and not real heavy ordinarily, I supply two grains; in other words, it is supplying a deficiency actually existing in that patient.

Many times early in delivery or maybe later, you have what are usually called false pains, a week or two, or a month in advance of what normally would be the delivery time. Many times I will administer two or three minims of pituitrin to that patient, if it is actually delivery time, if it is term. The pains will start in a moderate manner and carry on. If it is not term, within fifteen minutes those patients will completely stop. I have never seen it fail. As long as it isnt delivery time, they stop.

Wm. E. Jackson