Home › Medicine › Diseases Peculiar to Females

Diseases Peculiar to Females

Hysteric Fits.

This complaint, called also the hysteric passion, appears under various shapes, and is often owing to a lax, tender habit, obstruction of the menses, fluor albus, etc.

In the fit the patient is seized with an oppression in the breast, and difficult respiration, accompanied with a sensation of something like a ball ascending into the throat, which puts her under is a loss of speech, and generally violent convulsive motions. These, with a train of hypochondriac symptoms, are sufficient to determine the disease; to which may be added frequent laughing and crying, and various wild, irregular actions: after which a general soreness all over the body is felt; the spirits are low; the feet are cold. The urine is clear and limpid, and discharged in great quantity. The hysteric fit may be easily distinguished from fainting; for in this the pulse and respiration are entirely stopped; in that they are both perceivable.

Cure and Prevention.

Nothing recovers a person sooner out of the hysteric fit than putting the feet and legs in warm water.

When low spirits proceed from a suppression of the piles or the menses, these evacuations must be encouraged, or repeated cuppings substituted.

When they take their origin from long-continued grief, anxious thoughts, or other distresses of mind, nothing has done more service, in these cases, than agreeable company, daily exercise, and especially long journeys, and a variety of amusements.

Regimen. A light animal food, red wine, cheerful company, and a good clear air, with moderate exercise, are of great importance in this disorder. Drinking tea, and such like tepid relaxing fluids, should be but moderately indulged in. The cure consists in whatever tends to strengthen the solids, and the whole habit in general; and nothing will effect this more successfully than a long-continued use of the mineral chalybeate waters, and riding on horseback. Assafœtida pills, 3 grains each, are often temporarily useful.

Anti-hysteric Spirits.

Take of proof spirit, 1 pint; sal ammoniac, 2 ounces; assafœtida, 6 drachms; potash, 3 ounces.

Mix them, and draw off, by distillation, 1 pint, with a slow fire.

The spirit is pale when newly distilled, but acquires a considerable tinge by keeping. The dose is a teaspoonful, in some water, during hysterics, and the same to be taken occasionally.

Anti-hysteric Pills.

Take of compound pills of galbanum, 2 drachms; rust of iron, 4 scruples; syrup of ginger, as much as is sufficient. Form a mass, which is to be made into 40 pills, of which take 4 at noon and at seven in the evening every day, drinking after them half a glass of port wine. These pills are good in hysteric affections.

Fætid Enema.

This is made by adding to the ingredients of the common clyster 2 drachms of the tincture of assafœtida.

In cases of hysterics and convulsions, the fœtid enema is of singular use.

Opiate Draught.

Mix together cinnamon water, 1 ounce; spirit of caraways, an ounce; sulphuric ether, a drachm; tincture of castor, a drachm. Let this draught be taken every six hours, if the stomach should be affected by cramp. If the feet are cold, bottles filled with warm water should be applied to them.

Tonic for Debility in Females.

Take of soft extract of bark, 2 drachms; columbo and rust of iron, each 1 drachm; simple syrup, as much as is sufficient. Make into fifty pills; take two, and gradually increase to five, three times a day.

Compound Galbanum Pills.