PRE-NATAL MEDICATION


PRE-NATAL MEDICATION. THE education, evangelization and more through civilization of the world demands strong, healthy people. A large percentage of all children born cases to live before the fifth year. Of those surviving, many are suffering from disease which unfits them for usefulness. If by any means we may increase the standard of health among children such efforts make us public benefactors.


THE education, evangelization and more through civilization of the world demands strong, healthy people.

A large percentage of all children born cases to live before the fifth year. Of those surviving, many are suffering from disease which unfits them for usefulness. If by any means we may increase the standard of health among children such efforts make us public benefactors.

When children we well=-born and permitted to live in good surroundings, having correct diet, dress and care, medication is uncalled for. It is a truism that every child has a right to thus enter life, but of the hosts as we meet them it is difficult to recognize health of infant or parent. It is well known that perfect health of nerves for the mother ensures normal position and presentation of the foetus and makes labor a physiological process.

Humanity as yet cannot all claim perfect healthy of nerve or development, and we oftener meet an abnormal nervous state which if continued leaves a lasting impress upon the child. Many a case of wakefulness or restless irritable child has no other aetiology. We have had valuable instruction upon “Preparation for Mother hood,” but we should not lose sight of the fact that every child has two parents, and disease or unhealthful tendency of either or both is of equal importance and should receive medical supervision.

Prophylactic medicine is of the greatest importance. Preserving health is more desirable for the individual and society than restoring health. The writings of Hahnemann revel his purpose to not only cure disease, but to eradicate the tendency thereto. Following the instruction of this renowned teacher one may relieve present suffering and also modify the blight of inheritance. After an observation experience of years, I am convinced that every prescription which corrects an idiosyncrasy or constitutional disturbance, contributes to a better state of the future progeny.

If it is better for a child when his training begins a century before his birth, how much more perfect will he be when his medication is started at the same time. If such training and treatment were continued for a few generations every abnormal condition might be corrected, and healthy parentage would be the rule instead of the exception. It is no longer considered necessary for woman to suffer the numerous complications of pregnancy for medical skill is able in a large degree to modify or wholly remove the painful states. It will soon be recognized that medicine should be administered, hoping to benefit the coming child. We can offer no universal panacea for inherited ills or congenital defects, but would call your attention to the marked improvement possible to many cases.

We conclude that potentized remedies will correct anatomical or structural deficiencies fro knowing that Calcarea carb. 30 given in the morning, and Sulphur 30 in the evening, two weeks out of each month of pregnancy resulted in a perfect, healthy child where others preceding it had cleft palate or hare lip. Calc. phos. and Sul. given as above during seven months was followed by a perfect child where the former one had spina bifida, talipes and muscular weakness.

Graphites, Lachesis, Apis and Petroleum have at different times not only relieved the suffering of pregnant women, but so changed the embryo and developing foetus that the unsightly eczema afflicting former children failed to appear. Tuberculous parents having one or more children who suffered from acute hydrocephalus, have later received Calcarea phos. Sil. or Sul. during the term and these children not only escaped the common perils of dentition, but resisted the floating germs of contagious diseases, even the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus finding no habitation. Able writers report instances where one parent contracted syphilis before marriage and the children were classed as premature labors or still births, but they changed the record to that of living children by a course of pre-natal medication.

While much may be done in way of remedies and diet for rachitis, more may be accomplished by medication of the mother before the child’s birth, giving her health that she will not transmit a tendency to such weakness. Injuries do not develop this malady in a child of perfect health. We may not only give ante-partum medication to avoid a repetition of ailments developed in children previously born as the celebrated Von Grauvogl advised, but by timely attention we may secure health for the first child. We would , if possible, have pregnancy begin with perfect health, physical and mental, of both parents.

Human, perfection does not exist, but we may strive for it by removing the abnormal conditions as se are permitted. She may not be the greater invalid, but we have more frequent opportunity of influencing the mother’s system. Every evidence of disease in her which is recognized and overcome during its intra-uterine existence gives the infant increased advantage at birth.

If conception occur where marriage was prescribed as a cure for existing suffering dependent upon inflammation or spasmodic nerve action, we may expect accidents during the term and lying in for the mother, and many nervous disturbances for the infant. There is a form of infantile paralysis due to injury of the nerves of the brachial plexus, caused by stretching of the nerve- roots, on account of the position of the head during labor. To one who has witnessed a faulty presentation restored by the action of remedies upon nerves and uterine muscles, this calamity seems to be an avoidable one.

We approve of all sanitary and hygienic influences for the coming mother; would be glad if every one had daily, in unlimited quantities, both sunshine and love, for these make her willing to endure and able to meet difficulties; but combined with all these, and greater in power, is the influence of the truly indicated remedy. In physical or mental irritation, our Materia Medica, with all its imperfections, guides us to measures which correct for the time, and if continued cure the disease.

Sometimes, when a woman becomes conscious that she is pregnant, she looks forward to nearly a year of discomfort; then, a period of greater suffering ending in death, or, if not, an continuance of invalidism, increased burdens and anxiety, without the protection, consideration, and tenderness of her life- companion which reconciles many to endure the inevitable, and in her agony she gives expression to the accumulated unreasonableness of generations of her ancestors.

The mental state varies from a generally unhappy condition to that degree of insanity which makes her hate the coming child, and willing to risk closing her own life to accomplish its death and premature delivery. These deep emotions impress the character of the child she fails in destroying, and, more frequently than many know, gives bent to the mind of a cruel, hard character, an outcast and murderer. The intensity of the evil may be increased by the united purpose of both parents to limit foetal life. “Some biogenic particle goes astray and through transmission impresses its moral bias upon the erring offspring”.

I have seen so often the action of our remedies remove the feelings of hate, dread or fear, that to me it is evident we need only a closer study of indications, and their application, to produce a surprisingly improved condition of the moral tone of society. If half the time and energy spent in visiting prisons and in behalf of ex-convicts were devoted to soothing, making comfortable, and curing the morbid fears of pregnant women, we should have less demand for institutions for the feeble-minded, children’s hospitals, reform schools, and penitentiaries.

If we would have health of the whole organism, a well- balanced, even character, every organ performing its function, every inclination toward normal conduct, we cannot too early begin the treatment of these morbid feelings. A close study of or provings enables us to see are nerve remedies for these disturbances or neuroses: Actea rac., Ars., alb., Cham., Coffea, Beil., Hyos., Stram., Nux vom., Plat., Anacard., Magnesia phos., and Kali. phos.

Then, we would have pre-natal medication begun with the birth of the parents, and wisely continued until each wife in full development, free from disease, with active brain and moral strength, is able to meet wifehood and motherhood with never a term in the hospital nor attention of surgeon, until she may feed her own child without poisoning its system or morals, or exhausting her strength; and until each husband shall have brain, nerve, muscle, and lymphatics in such normal action that he will not transmit weakness of character nor seeds of death.

DISCUSSION.

GEO. B. PECK, M.D.: The object for which the admirable paper to which we have just listened was written commends itself to all, while the possibility of its accomplishment, even in part, and the efficacy of methods recommended may be doubted by many. The reasonableness, therefore, of its teaching alone requires consideration.

Millie J Chapman