The midwives book, or, The whole art of midwifry discovered.: Directing childbearing women how to behave themselves in their conception, breeding, bearing, and nursing of children in six books, viz. ... / By Mrs. Jane Sharp practitioner in the art of midwifry above thirty years.

CHAP. V.

Of Womens diseases in general.

WHosoever rightly considers it will pre∣sently find, that the Female sex are subject to more diseases by odds than the Male kind are, and therefore it is reason that great care should be had for the cure of that sex that is the weaker and most subject to in∣firmities in some respects above the o∣ther.

The Female sex then that it may be more nearly provided for wheresoever it is deficient must be considered under three several consi∣derations, that is, as maids, as wives, as widows, and their several distempers that be∣fall them almost commonly respect either the

womb or their breasts or both, and many of these diseases and distempers are common to all the Female sex, I mean they sometimes happen to them in any of the foresaid three e∣states of life, but Virgins, or Maids diseases that are more peculiar to them, though not essential, because many of them are incident to the rest, the causes may be the same; they are that wich is called the white Feaver, or green Sickness, fits of the Mother, strangling of the Womb, Rage of the Matrix, extreme Me∣lancholly, Falling-sickness, Head-ach, beat∣ing of the arteries in the back and sides, great palpitations of the heart, Hypochondriacal di∣seases from the Spleen, stoppings of the Li∣ver, and ill affections of the stomach by con∣sent from the womb. But that I may make as perfect an enumeration as may be of all disea∣ses incident to our sex, & give you some of the best remedies that are prescribed by the most Authentick authors, or what I my self have proved by long experience.

Know then that there are some diseases that happen about the secrets of women, as when the mouth of the Matrix is too narrow, or too great, when there is a Yard in the womb like a mans Yard, when the secrets are full of Pimples or very rugged, when there are swellings or small excrescenses in

the Womb, or else Warts in the neck of it, or the Piles or Chaps, Ulcers, or Fistulaes, or Cancers, or Gangreens, and Sphacelus, or Mortification: all these and more that may be reduced to these heads, are found in the en∣trance or mouth of the womb.

2. As to the womb it self it is frequently offended with ill distempers, being either too hot or too cold, too dry, or too moist, and of these are many more compounded, as too hot and too dry, too moist and too cold; these are all to be cured by their contraries, cold by heat, moist by driers.

Or the womb is sometimes ill shaped and strange things are found in it, some women have two wombs, and some again have none at all. Again the vessels of the womb some∣times will open preternaturally, and blood run forth in abundance, sometimes the womb swells and grows bigger than it should be: It may be troubled with a Dropsie, with swel∣ling of its veins from too much blood, also it may be inflamed, displaced, broken, and it may fall out of the body.

It may be rotten, or else cancerated, and sometimes womens stones and vessels for ge∣neration are diseased.

Further the womb may be troubled with an itch, it may be weak or painful, or suffer by

sympathy and antipathy from sweet or stink∣ing smells.

Moreover the terms sometimes flow too soon, sometimes too late, they are too ma∣ny or too few, or are quite stopt that they flow not at all. Sometimes they fall by drops, and again sometimes they overflow; sometimes they cause pain, sometimes they are of an e∣vil colour and not according to nature; some∣times they are voided not by the womb but some other way; sometimes strange things are sent forth by the womb, and sometimes they are troubled with flux of seed or the whites.

As for women with child they are subject to miscarry, to hard labour, to disorderly births of their children; sometimes the child is dead in the womb; sometimes alive, but must be taken forth by cutting or the woman cannot be delivered; sometimes she is trou∣bled with false conceptions, with ill forma∣tions of the child, with superfetations, ano∣ther child begot before she is delivered of her first; with monsters or Moles, and many more such like infirmities.

And as for women in child-bed, some∣times the Secundine or after-birth will not fol∣low, their purgations are too few or too ma∣ny, they are in great pains in their belly, their privities are rended by hard delive∣ry

as far as their Fundament, also they are inflamed many times and ulcerated and cannot go to stool but their fundament will fall forth. They have swoonding and epilep∣tick fits, watching and dotings; their whole body swels, especially their belly, legs and feet: they are subject to hot sharp Feavers and acute diseases, to vomiting and costive∣ness, to fluxes, to incontinence of Urine, that they cannot hold their water.

As for their breasts that hold the greatest consent with the womb of all the parts of the body, they are sometimes exceeding great or swelled with milk, or increased in number, more breasts than there should be by nature; sometimes the breasts are inflamed and trou∣ble with an Erisipelas, or hard swellings, or Scirrhus, or full of kernels, or tumors called the Kings evil, or strange things may be bred in the breasts; besides this some breasts are diseased with Ulcers, and Fustulaes or Can∣kers and some have no nipples, or are chopt or Ulcerated, and sometimes women have breasts will breed no milk to suckle the child with.

To speak then particularly to all these dis∣eases that belong to our sex might be thought to be over tedious; however I shall so handle the matter, that I may not troubled the Rea∣der

with impertinences, that I shall apply my self to what is most needful for the know∣ledge and cure of them all; but because many diseases may be refered to the chief in that kind, and the remedies that will cure one may be sufficient to cure the rest, the judicious Reader may, according as he shall have occa∣sion, make a more special application.

For it is in vain for any one to make use of what is written if they have no Judgement in the things they use, in such cases it will be best for them to ask counsel of others first, till they may attain to some farther insight themselves, and then no doubt but when they shall meet with sufficient remedies to cure the greatest distempers, they will be able to make use of the same without farther direction in the cure of those diseases that are lesse; not that I intend to omit any thing that is mate∣rial in the whole, but that I may not trouble the Reader with needless repetitions of the same things, as too many authours doe, which breeds tediousness, and can give little or no sa∣tisfaction at all.