£*•

DISEASES OF THE GENERATIVE SYSTEM. 425
rhagic; clots are formed in the uterus, or false mem
branes, which are expelled with pains and agonies, like
those of childbirth.
During the paroxysms, we have two measures of re
lief. A long and very cold sitz-bath, or a hot one. With
the hot one, the relief is more immediate, but the cold
is best. When it is passed, the treatment should be
commenced in earnest, to prevent its recurrence.
Every possible cause must be abstained from. Every
law of health must be observed. The local treatment
of sitz-baths, daily increasing in coldness, frictions around
the pelvis, the wet bandage, and the vaginal injections,
must ,be perseveringly used. A free, careless, happy,
unexciting, and unexhausting life, will add much to the
efficacy of all measures of relief. Daily wet-sheet
packs, in any bad case, should never be neglected.
Menorrhagia, or profuse menstruation, may be an
excessive secretion of the menstrual fluid, or, more
commonly, a real hemorrhage. In a perfectly healthy
state, the secretion is light in color, lasts not over two
days, and does not exceed two ounces. All beyond this
is hemorrhage. In irritated, debilitated, and congested
conditions of the ovarian and uterine system, the proper
menstrual discharge comes on, probably, at irregular in
tervals, lasts two or three days, and is followed by a
week or two of hemorrhage. I have known it to come
on with perfect regularity, and then last, with profuse
flooding, for ten days, and cease, and do this periodic
ally.
The causes of this disease, whatever they are, must
be removed. Thousands of women are consigned to
premature graves ; some by the morbid excess of their