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Other frequent causes of more or less disturbance of the heart's action, often accompanied by pain, are overexertion, worry and mental anxiety, and intestinal toxemias due to too much protein or disturbed protein digestion. Frequent causes are tobacco, and the overuse of tea and coffee. Many a patient's pseudo-anginas are corrected by stopping tea and coffee.
In our laboratory experiments and in our clinical observations we have found that exhaustion produced by intense emotion, prolonged physical exertion, insomnia, intense fear, certain toxemias, hemorrhage, and the condition commonly denominated surgical shock, produce similar outward manifestations and identical brain-cell changes.
TOXEMIAS. In order to understand what are known as the toxemias of pregnancy, we must remember that the nutrition of our bodies involves three separate and distinct sets of processes. What we eat is, in the first place, digested and absorbed into the body; secondly, the products of digestion are utilized by the tissues; and, finally, the waste material is thrown off from the body.
The cause of an irregularly acting heart in an adult may be organic, as in the various forms of myocarditis, in broken compensation of valvular disease, Stokes-Adams disease, coronary disease, auricular fibrillation, auricular flutter, cerebral disease, and toxemias from various kinds of serious organic disease.
When the disease is actually present, there is nothing to do except for the patient to stop active labor, never to overeat or overdrink, to prevent, if possible, toxemias from the bowels, to keep the colon as clean as possible, and for the physician to give the heart such medicinal aids as seem needed, vasodilators if the heart is acting too strongly, possibly small doses of cardiac tonics if the heart is acting weakly; always with the knowledge that a degenerative myocarditis may be present in considerable amount, or that coronary sclerosis may be present.
They generally proceed harmoniously, but if they do not there results an autointoxication of the mother which is called a toxemia. Such toxemias, with extremely rare exceptions, do not occur in the early months, but are associated with the period of the active growth of the fetus, namely, the second half of pregnancy.
At present the value of prevention in the treatment of the toxemias of pregnancy is so clearly recognized that charitable organizations employ nurses to visit women of the poorer classes during pregnancy in order to instruct them about the measures that I have just indicated. Remarkable results have already been obtained.
Although the kidneys are not responsible for all the toxemias of pregnancy, an analysis of the urine affords the most definite means of determining whether or not such a condition is present. When thus detected, prompt treatment will guarantee to the patient almost certain relief.
Nausea and Vomiting Heartburn Flatulence Defective Teeth Pressure Symptoms: Swelling of the Feet; Varicose Veins; Hemorrhoids; Shortness of Breath Leucorrhea Toxemias. Most of the ailments to which prospective mothers are liable are merely the natural manifestations of pregnancy, exaggerated to such an extent as to cause inconvenience and discomfort.
These are, to a very large extent, preventable; and, though they occur rarely, precautions for their prevention should be taken in every case of pregnancy. By far the most important members of this group are the toxemias of pregnancy.
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