FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  
39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>   >|  
e need only to help them by the ordinary tonics, careful feeding, and change of air in due season. It may not, however, be out of place to say here that when the convalescence from these maladies seems to be slower than is common, and ordinary tonics inefficient, massage and the use of electricity are not unimportant aids towards health, but in such cases require to be handled with an amount of caution which is less requisite in more chronic conditions of disordered health. In other and fatal or graver maladies, such as, for example, advanced pulmonary phthisis, however proper it may be to fatten, it is almost an impossible task, and, as Pollock remarks, the lung-trouble may be advancing even while the patient is gaining in weight. Nevertheless, the earlier stages of pulmonary tuberculosis are suitable cases, and with sufficient attention to purity and frequent change of air in their rooms tubercular sufferers may be brought by this means to a point of improvement where open-air and altitude cures will have their best effects. There remains a class of cases desirable to fatten and redden,--cases which are often, or usually, chronic in character, and present among them some of the most difficult problems which perplex the physician. If I pause to dwell upon these, it is because they exemplify forms of disease in which my method of treatment has had the largest success; it is because some of them are simply living records of the failure of every other rational plan and of many irrational ones; it is because many of them find no place in the text-book, however sadly familiar they are to the physician. The group I would speak of contains that large number of people who are kept meagre and often also anaemic by constant dyspepsia, in its varied forms, or by those defects in assimilative processes which, while more obscure, are as fertile parents of similar mischiefs. Let us add the long-continued malarial poisonings, and we have a group of varied origin which is a moderate percentage of cases in which loss of weight and loss of color are noticeable, and in which the usual therapeutic methods do sometimes utterly fail. For many of these, fresh air, exercise, change of scene, tonics, and stimulants are alike valueless; and for them the combined employment of the tonic influences I shall describe, when used with absolute rest, massage, and electricity, is often of inestimable service. A portion of the class last re
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  
39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

tonics

 

change

 
chronic
 

physician

 

health

 

fatten

 

weight

 

varied

 

pulmonary

 

ordinary


massage
 
maladies
 
electricity
 

familiar

 

meagre

 

people

 
describe
 

number

 

largest

 

success


treatment
 

method

 

portion

 

simply

 

living

 

inestimable

 

irrational

 

rational

 

records

 

service


failure
 

absolute

 

percentage

 

stimulants

 

valueless

 

moderate

 

origin

 

combined

 

noticeable

 

utterly


exercise
 

therapeutic

 

methods

 

poisonings

 

employment

 
influences
 

assimilative

 

processes

 

obscure

 

defects