Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Spalding. -- Yes; promoted in persons predisposed.

Knight. -- No; unless over-indulgence in the sexual relation.

Hopkins. -- Promoted not by marriage but by the burden of domestic cares.

Sanborn. -- Marriage is not necessarily a cause of consumption, but inordinate sexual indulgence which almost invariably follows, is, in my opinion, one of the chief causes of consumption.

Carbee. -- Not, except where the parents are predisposed.

Bullard. -- Two instances where but slight signs of any taint, but the inor- dinate sexual intercourse produced the disease in the female.

Brownell. -- Not in itself, but from sleeping with and inhaling the breath of a consumptive person.

Eldredge. -- If marriage did not bring an increase of cares it would have a favorable influence in both sexes, but as it generally does, it oftener has the contrary effect.

Mackenzie. -- With men, but not with women.

Snow. -- I have no doubt, from personal observation, that early marriage and the early development of the sexual function tend to promote consumption.

Smith. -- Marriage commonly promotes health, and hence may check consumption, but when it brings undue burden or indulgence, especially too frequent child-bearing, it promotes its progress.

Howe. -- I said promoted simply because I find marriage is almost always attended with inordinate sexual indulgence, especially in the young. Were it not for this fact I do not think it would be considered a promoter of consumption.

Hurlbert. -- I think consumption, in this locality, is promoted more by inter- marriage than by any other cause except hereditary taint.

SIXTEENTH QUESTION.

IS CONSUMPTION EVER CHECKED BY CHILD-REARING, &C

The table is as follows: --

This table is interesting in several respects, viz., first, suggesting the interest the profession has in the question, only 24 (11.42 per cent.) having declined to answer it. Second, in the fact brought out by 37 (17.61 per cent.) that consumption, while being checked by pregnancy, seems to run on more rapidly after delivery. Third, including the three first columns under the one head of affirmative, we learn that one hundred and forty-six out of the two hundred and ten (69.52 per cent.) of all the correspondents believe that consumption is checked by child-bearing.

Extracts from Correspondents' letters relative to this question.

Deane. -- Its effects are modified very much by circumstances; sometimes checked, sometimes promoted.

Shurtteff. -- Seems to retard it till confinement, and then to hasten it to a fatal termination.

Blood. -- Checked while with child, but rapidly advancing after the birth.

Lindley. -- I think I have seen it checked, but too often child-bearing promotes it.

Spofford. -- Several died soon after delivery.

Burr. -- Have notes of two cases of marked phthisis checked by child-bearing.

Winsor. -- I am confident that I have seen the progress of the disease checked while pregnancy lasted, some half a dozen times. On the other hand, I have seen it hastened by lactation.

Blodgett. -- Have now under operation a lady who, having borne three children in as many consecutive years, seems to have laid the foundation of a continually progressing tubercular action by this constant requisition upon her surplus vital energies. The family have a tubercular taint attending each generation, this lady only, of the present generation, having been the subject of tubercular activity. The connection between manifest tubercular action and the exhaustion consequent upon too frequent parturition, here seems to be plain and direct.

Stone. -- I have just lost a patient from consumption, who was delivered of a seven-months' child on the day of her death. She came under my care about the time she became pregnant, and her disease steadily advanced, -- her condition rather made worse by her pregnancy, -- till her death. The autopsy showed most extensive disease of both lungs, tubercular in character. Consumption is not a frequent disease in this town, and the population is too changing to permit me to express any opinion decidedly.

Reed. -- I have known several cases where the progress of the disease seemed to be checked by repeated pregnancies with short intervals. Prolonged lactation develops the disease rapidly.

Morse. -- I have known of five cases where women having consumption, the disease was checked on becoming pregnant; hut they died soon after parturition, the disease progressing with renewed vigor. I think I have seen several cases of consumption caused or promoted by lactation.

Luce. -- I have known cases checked by child-bearing.

Rice. -- Child-bearing often hastens the development of tubercular phthisis.