Uterine diseases are the cause of many of the pathological symptoms accompanying pregnancy, and may be the cause of the pain in parturition. To attain to the best conditions for maternity, the removal of these disorders is essential.
Nine-tenths of American women are more or less afflicted with these maladies. They are thus unfitted for ordinary vocations, and the functions of reproduction are so perverted that maternity becomes a dreaded burden.
This book is not a “doctor book” in the ordinary understanding of that term, neither is this chapter a regular treatise upon the diseases of women. The causes of these ailments, however, and some simple common sense hints are given. These will enable women to avoid and to alleviate suffering, without resorting to drugs, or severe local treatment.
Inflammation is the most common derangement of the uterus; indeed, some authors claim that it causes or accompanies all other uterine diseases.
Inflammation may affect either the mucous membrane, the cervix or the fundus, or the entire organ may be involved. When the lining membrane only is affected, the patient has heat and burning in the pelvis; with or without pain, and there is a light, glairy discharge which later may become dark and offensive and often irritating.
Inflammation in the fundus or cervix gives at first a dragging, heavy pain in the pelvis, extending down the thighs and legs, with heat and pain in the lower part of the back. It is also attended with swelling of the organ and more or less discharge.
As the disease progresses there are usually sympathetic or reflex symptoms. These are heat and pain in the top of the head, aching, sore pain at the base of the brain, a pain and burning between the shoulders, which may extend up and down the spine, and to the arms. Physician and patient both are often deceived, and diagnose this last symptom as neuralgia or spinal complaint. The patient may have stricture and pain in the throat, with a dry, nervous cough. She also is liable to severe attacks of headache, suffers from dyspepsia, and indeed her symptoms are apt to assume the form of, or resemble any disease.
Her mental sufferings are even worse than her physical. She has loss of memory, is fretful and irritable. Carried to the extreme, her mind becomes unbalanced and insanity results. Statistics show that uterine disease is a very common cause of insanity in women.
Ulceration is usually found upon the mouth of the womb, or occasionally on the lining membrane. The raspberry ulceration is the most common form. This appears like granulation on the eyelids, and is always preceded and accompanied by inflammation. The surface becomes red, swollen and then abraded, resulting in ulcers. This is accompanied by a thick, purulent, yellow discharge, which, as the disease advances, becomes thin and bloody, with an offensive odor. The pain and reflex symptoms are much the same as in inflammation.
Induration, or thickening and hardening of the cervix is a frequent sequel of inflammation, especially where caustic treatment has been used.
Violations of physical laws cause the occurrence of the above named diseases.
Women take it as a matter of course that the organs of generation should be diseased, without one thought of their responsibility in the matter. Physicians, too, as specialists, treat woman much as though she were a machine to be adjusted at will.
Errors in dress, in diet, want of exercise and the abuse of the sexual relation are the principal causes of these ailments. The frequent use of drugs that act directly upon the generative organs induce and enhance these affections.
There is no doubt that the customary dress of woman, causing such deformity, and such perversion of all her powers, is the prime factor in producing ailments peculiar to her sex.
Being unequal in distribution, it leaves the extremities unprotected; by pressure it restricts digestion, respiration and circulation, while by its weight it burdens the weakened muscles.
Who has the power to save women from this one sin? Who has the pen or voice to present the claims of unborn generations? Many women who have suffered years from uterine diseases have finally recovered by simply adopting a hygienic dress. One thing is certain; it matters not what treatment one takes for these ailments, she can not hope to get well and keep well if she does not remove the restraints of clothing. (See Chap. VII.)
In diet, highly seasoned food, rich pastries, and indeed all food containing in excess the carbonaceous elements, especially the fats and sweets, will produce an inflammatory condition. Some irritating cause locates the affection in certain organs. Constipation also will induce and aggravate any uterine affection.
The treatment of these disorders should be less local than constitutional. The whole system must have the best conditions for health, giving nature a chance to restore harmony in organic powers.
The tepid sitz-bath will be found invaluable in both inflammation and ulceration of the womb. It should be taken in most cases as often as every other day, preceded by exercise, and followed by friction and rest. Half the value of this bath is lost if one fails to lie down after it. The best time for the bath is in the forenoon, but if, on account of daily duties, this time is unavailable, there is no special objection to taking it just before retiring. It is very quieting, and prevents sleeplessness.
The thermal bath (page 118) is especially desirable if the circulation seems sluggish, the skin inert, and the patient sensitive to cold. Take it twice a week.
Hot vaginal injections are found invaluable for these affections. They should be taken with a fountain syringe, using a large quantity of water as hot as can be borne. If practicable the patient may recline over a bed pan. Not having this, she should stand over a vessel, elevated upon a chair. If the discharge from the womb is offensive, use carbolic soap in the water.
Glycerine diluted one-third with water and applied by inserting absorbent cotton or oakum, is excellent to reduce inflammation and induration. This at first increases the discharge. In severe cases it can be applied daily, but ordinarily every other day is sufficient. Some mild remedies like hydrastis or calendula are useful in stimulating healthy action, and can be used under the direction of the physician.
Exercise is one of the most valuable therapeutic measures for uterine affections. If one is quite feeble, applied motion in the form of Swedish movements, massage or muscle-beating is most desirable. Women suffering from uterine diseases are unable to take needful exercise in an erect position. Walking, riding, housework, etc., aggravate the symptoms, increasing the local irritation and inflammation.
In most women the muscles of the trunk or the abdomen, and the involuntary muscles of respiration, from lack of proper use, are weak and atrophied. “They have not been trained to life’s occasions.” The following exercises, taken in a reclining posture, will serve the purpose of producing attrition and vigor of muscles, accelerating the circulation of the blood, and developing the involuntary muscles used in respiration; at the same time they increase the action of all the digestive organs, and by a derivative effect remove local inflammation, besides mechanically correcting mal-positions:
1. Reclining on back, holding knees and shoulders firm, move hips from side to side ten times.
2. Same position, on spring bed, move hips up and down fifteen times. This exercise can be taken by one that is weak, as the springs aid the motion.
3. Flex knees, same as No. 1, twenty times.
4. Flex knees, same as No. 2, twenty times.
5. Flex the knees and sway them from side to side twenty times.
6. Flex the knees and elevate the hips, resting the body on shoulders and feet. Move slowly up and down ten times, holding to count ten.
7. Elbows flexed to the sides, hands grasped by an assistant and slowly brought to a horizontal position parallel with the head, patient resisting. Bring them back to the sides, assistant resisting, ten times.
8. Same, only bring arms to a perpendicular position.
9. Reclining, face downward, flex knees and sway feet from right to left fifteen times.
10. With the help of an assistant, flex and extend the limbs, using resistance as in No. 7.
11. Rest on elbows, and sway shoulders from right to left ten times.
12. Elevate the body slowly five times, resting only on toes and elbows. Hold to count ten.
13. Recline on back and make hand thrusts, with or without weights, upward, outward, forward and downward.
14. Same position, flex and thrust the limbs downward alternately.
15. Kneel face downward, gradually raise the hips until the whole weight rests upon the shoulders. Remain in this position for five minutes. This is invaluable for prolapsus and retroversion, and should be resorted to several times a day. One may get the position more readily by sliding off from a bed or lounge head first; relatively, standing on one’s head.
16. Lie face downward on two stools, 18 to 24 inches apart, resting the knees upon one and the shoulders upon the other, five minutes.
17. Same position; have an assistant knead the bowels by gentle pressure with clenched fists five minutes.
18. Same position, elevating hips five times.
The last three are quite severe, but if there is strength to adopt them, they are valuable in retroversion of the womb.
If there is no pelvic inflammation, and it is required to aid digestion and develop the muscles of trunk, the following are invaluable:
19. Sit upon a stool, feet firmly upon the floor, hands upon sides, hips firm; sway body from side to side as far as possible.
20. Same position, hands clasped over the head; sway body backward and forward.
21. Same position; combine Nos. 19 and 20 in a twisting motion of the body. The effect of the three last can be varied by holding one or both hands perpendicularly over the head.
22, 23, 24. Same as 19, 20 and 21, only standing position.
The beneficial effects are increased in the six last by inflating the lungs.
The severe caustic treatment that has been so universal in these affections is greatly to be deprecated. There are fashions in medicines as in other things, and the one fashion the last twenty-five years has been local treatment for diseases of women. In no department of medical practice has the physician’s prerogative been more abused. For the slightest ailments the severest applications are often employed. Nitrate of silver, sulphate of zinc, corrosive sublimate, tannic acid, nitric acid, all violent in their action, are in common use. Physicians are known to resort frequently to the application of a probe, heated to a white heat, and, what is just as bad, to wet a swab in fuming nitric acid, and introduce it into the womb. The delicate mucus membrane is burned and scarified, the patient tortured, and the nerves receive a severe shock. Patients able to be about are often laid up for several days by one of these treatments.
One day I met a lady upon the street who had been confined to the house for two years. I expressed pleasure at seeing her out. She told me that she could get out because her doctor was absent and her local treatment suspended. She said: “That always makes me sick in bed three or four days.”
“What! do you permit such treatment?”
“The doctor says I cannot get well without it.”
She, like many other poor suffering women, was persuaded that all this torture was necessary to her final recovery.
Physicians are known to keep women under treatment two or three years, yet frequently, instead of improvement, there is only a constant decline in health and strength.
The tide is now turning, and both physicians and patients begin to see that a great wrong has been done. So high an authority as Dr. Gaillard Thomas says: “Every one who has had experience in the treatment of these disorders must have been impressed with the wonderful improvement in cases which have long resisted local treatment, resulting from a sea voyage, a visit to a watering place, a course of sea bathing, or a few months spent in the country.”
Dr. George T. Elliott says:—“In cases of uterine diseases, the best success will be attained by securing for patients a life of muscular activity, so equalizing the circulation. And that thus the local treatment, now so much in vogue, might commonly be dispensed with.”
“It is easy for a sensitive woman to persuade herself that her afflictions from the toothache downward, are due to diseases of the womb. Here comes in the charlatan, to exaggerate the disease, if any, and to beguile the patient with promises of cure. The speculum, the caustic and the knife look like work, and she feels that something is being done for her.
“By and by the bubble bursts, and for all the good that this torture has accomplished, the poor woman might as well have adopted the scientific treatment of La-potai, namely, the application of a blister to the top of the head, to raise the fallen womb.”
Dr. E. R. Peaslee says of local treatments: “They have thus far produced, on the whole, more evil than good.”
Dr. Taylor, in his valuable little volume, “Health for Women,” assures us “that by using mere local treatment, the essential disease itself is left neglected, untouched, and even unsought; that symptoms only command the attention, and they will subside and become of trifling account whenever the essential malady is recognized and provided for.”
Such words as these, from men high in the profession, give hope of a tendency to a reaction from the prevalent dependence on local treatment. When such men take the back course, and condemn their own uterine surgery, hope may arise for long-suffering woman. This local treatment should be protested against by women. It is a relic of the past, and is contrary to science and common sense.
Within the memory of many now living, every patient under treatment for acute or chronic diseases was bled. He was also tortured by blisters, leeches and setons. Had he fever, he was denied water to quench his thirst. How the mother’s heart has been wrung with anguish when her darling babe, lying sick in her arms, has pleaded again and again for water? Who has not heard “Drink! mamma, drink!” and turned to hide the sympathetic tear, for, by the doctor’s orders, the little one must be denied!
To-day, where is the physician who bleeds his patient, and applies the blister? Many young doctors have never even seen a leech. Who would think of denying the fever patient water, and all that he desires? What has wrought this change? Mainly the protest of the people. Reforms in medical practice have come because the people have demanded them.
Severe local treatment should be classed with the bleeding and blistering, and, with them, be relegated to the past. Women must protest positively and persistently against the burning, probing and scarifying of the womb. As you value health and life, seek such measures for restoration as are more in accordance with nature. With these diseases as with others the simplest measures are the most effective.
Leucorrhea is not a disease, it is only a symptom of uterine derangement, as a cough is of a lung or throat affection. It is an increase of the normal mucus secretion, being an effort of nature to throw off inflammation. As a symptom it need cause no uneasiness, and should not be interfered with, unless by an occasional warm vaginal bath to insure cleanliness. The conditions which cause the discharge being removed, it will give no farther annoyance.
At all events styptics and astringents should not be resorted to. They only arrest the discharge temporarily, and do not remove the cause. The general and local treatment for inflammation is usually sufficient. Remember that as long as the uterine irritation exists one is better to have this discharge than to have it suppressed.
The displacements of the uterus most frequently found are prolapsus, retroversion and anteversion. Very much the same causes induce these different deviations. The supporting muscles in the perineum become weakened, it may be from a lack of exercise, or from the constant pressure of hardened feces, consequent upon constipation, or sometimes as the result of long continued inflammation.
The viscera are pressed down from above by the stricture and weight of clothing. The mobility of the organ renders it susceptible to change of position under these circumstances.
These conditions must be overcome, or treatment will prove futile. In most cases the uterus can be readily restored to its natural position. First remove the pressure from above, and then take the exercises prescribed on page 267. This will give room for the pelvic viscera, and strengthen the supporting muscles. Nature’s recuperative powers are never more remarkably demonstrated.
The prevailing custom of introducing pessaries of rubber, glass, etc., is to be deprecated. While they may give temporary relief, they increase the relaxation of the vagina and muscles, besides constantly drawing the attention of the patient to her ailment.
The connection of mind and thought with pelvic disorders is close, and is susceptible of becoming permanently fixed upon any organ. The effect is highly injurious. It must result in increasing this kind of morbid action, thus fixing and perpetuating the disease. This should most carefully be guarded against. In every way divert her mind from the subject. Let her but forget that she has a womb, and she will have found the best remedy for her affection.
Hysteria is only a culmination or exaggeration of the reflex or nervous symptoms in diseases of the uterus. It is simply temporary insanity, and should be treated as such. The patient loses self-control, and gives way to violent paroxysms of laughing or crying, possibly fainting fits and convulsions.
Some quiet, decisive means will restore her. Inhalation of ammonia, cold water on the head, a hot foot bath, a full bath, or even a decided word from a friend readily establishes her balance. The spoken word must not be given in a combative spirit, but simply with cheerfulness and decision. Banish fear from your own heart, and agitation from your manner, and then say to the patient, “Why, you are all right! Listen to me a moment.” Get her attention, then with tact relate some incident, or make some startling statement that will change the current of her thought. To prevent the attacks, treat the uterine affection from which they arise.
The mind can rise superior to the body in uterine affections, as in all other bodily ailments, and thus aid in establishing harmony. One can, by persistent argument with himself, conquer or dispel the thought of pain or disease. Also, by engaging in some work which calls forth the highest impulses.
By seeking to ennoble and enrich the lives of others, by ignoring personal sense and pleasure, the soul, the ego, becomes in harmony with the spirit of the universe, and this harmony should give health of body, as well as peace of mind.
The body is only a reflection of the spirit, is constantly and entirely subject to it, and if the spirit rises above error, discord and sin, dwelling in the realm of truth and love, disease and infirmity of the flesh cannot exist.