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A Private Looking-glass For The Female Sex, a non-fiction book by Aristotle |
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Chapter 9. Of Scirrhous Tumours, or Hardness of the Womb |
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_ CHAPTER IX Of Scirrhous Tumours, or Hardness of the Womb.
CAUSE. One cause of this disease may be ascribed to want of judgment on the part of the physician, as many empirics when attending to inflammation of the womb, chill the humour so much that it can neither pass backward nor forward, and hence, the matter being condensed, turns into a hard, stony substance. Other causes may be suppression of the menses, retention of the _Lochein_, commonly called the after purging; eating decayed meat, as in the disordered longing after the _pleia_ to which pregnant women are often subject. It may, however, also proceed from obstructions and ulcers in the matrix or from some evil affections of the stomach or spleen. If the bottom of the womb be affected, she feels, as it were, a heavy burden representing a mole,[7] yet differing from it, in that the breasts are attenuated, and the whole body grows less. If the neck of the womb be affected, no outward humours will appear; its mouth is retracted and feels hard to the touch, nor can the woman have sexual intercourse without great pain.
PROGNOSTICS. Confirmed scirrhus is incurable, and will turn to cancer or incurable dropsy, and when it ends in cancer it proves fatal, because as the innate heat of these parts is almost smothered, it can hardly be restored again.
CURE. Where there is repletion, bleeding is advisable, therefore open a vein in one arm and in both feet, more especially if the menses are suppressed. Treat the humours with syrup of borage, succory made with a poultice, and then take the following pills, according to the patient's strength. Hiera piera six drachms, two and a half drachms each of black hellebore and polypody; a drachm and a half each of agaric, lapis lazuli, sal Indiae, coloquintida, mix them and make two pills. After purging, mollify the hardness as follows:--the privy parts and the neck of the womb with an ointment of decalthea and agrippa; or take two drachms each of opopanax, bdellium, ammoniac and myrrh, and half a drachm of saffron; dissolve the gum in oil of lilies and sweet almond and make an ointment with wax and turpentine. Apply diacatholicon ferellia below the navel, and make infusions of figs, mugwort, mallows, pennyroyal, althea, fennel roots, melilot, fenugreek and the four mollifying herbs, with oil of dill, camomiles and lilies dissolved in it. Take three drachms of gum bdellium, put the stone pyrites on the coals, and let her take the fumes into her womb. Foment the privy parts with a decoction of the roots and leaves of dane wort. Take a drachm each of gum galbanum and opopanax, half an ounce each of juice of dane wort and mucilage of fenugreek, an ounce of calve's marrow, and a sufficient quantity of wax, and make a pessary. Or make a pessary of lead only, dip it in the above mentioned things, and put it up. The atmosphere must be kept temperate, and gross and salt meats such as pork, bull beef, fish and old cheese, must be prohibited.
FOOTNOTES: [7] _Mole_: "A somewhat shapeless, compact fleshy mass occurring in the uterus, due to the retention and continued life of the whole or a part of the foetal envelopes, after the death of the foetus (a _maternal or true mole_); or being some other body liable to be mistaken for this, or perhaps a polypus or false mole." (_Whitney's Century Dictionary_.) _ |
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