Spasmodic cough, or palpitation, if allowed to continue, may ultimately bring on abortion. The treatment just detailed is equally applicable here, and if the circulation be at all excited blood-letting will prove useful. In bleeding women at this early stage of pregnancy it is not desirable, or even safe, to draw a large quantity suddenly from the system, as it may greatly endanger the life of the foetus, and from the state of the nervous irritability, may even run the risk of bringing on convulsions; syncope is always more or less hazardous to a pregnant woman, and should if possible be avoided. Some caution will be also necessary in our choice of aperient medicines; drastic purgatives, as aloes, colocynth, scammony, &c. are not suited to the state of pregnancy, as they irritate the lower bowels, and thus excite a disposition to uterine contraction; mild, but effectual laxatives, such as castor oil, confectio sennæ, a seidlitz powder, are better adapted; the latter, especially will be found useful, as, from its being taken during effervescence, it is better calculated to quiet the stomach. _Diarrhoea_ is sometimes an exceedingly troublesome symptom during pregnancy. It not only weakens the patient and thus tends indirectly to induce abortion by destroying the life of the foetus, but it acts also in a more direct manner by exciting uterine contractions, particularly when accompanied, as is frequently the case, with tenesmus. The diarrhoea which is met with in pregnant women is not so frequently, as has been supposed, the result of irritation from the uterus, producing simply an increased peristaltic action of the bowels without any considerable derangement of their functions; by far the most usual form is connected with a very deranged state of the alimentary canal; the evacuations are offensive and generally very acrid; the liver is torbid or secretes an unhealthy bile, so that at length a state approaching to dysentery is produced. Even if the patient go to the full term of utero-gestation, she is much reduced, and is ill able to make those exertions which will be required during labour. If the motions, though frequent, are scanty in proportion to the ingesta, or if scybala are occasionally expelled, one or two doses of castor oil will be required; a few drops of Liq. Opii Sedativ. may be added with advantage to allay the irritability of the bowels, after which, equal parts of blue pill, or Hydr. c. Cretâ, and Dover's powder, will excite the liver to a healthier action, and still farther control their inordinate activity. If the disposition to tenesmus be troublesome, a small injection of starch and opium will afford relief. If the stomach will bear it, a rice-milk diet for a day or two is desirable; it is a gentle demulcent to the irritable intestines, and has a slightly constipating effect.