On the study of the hand for indications of local and general disease / by Edward Blake.

  • Blake, Edward T. (Edward Thomas), 1842-1905.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the study of the hand for indications of local and general disease / by Edward Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    speech somewhat thick. Prone to recurrent attacks of dis- tended stomach and colon. He is markedly pallid; the lips are cyanosed; he pants on exertion. Pain in the back of his head. His cough is very troublesome, especially at night ; scanty, pearl-like expectoration. Much dreaming. Influenza on 15th March; much worse since. Urine healthy, lungs normal, left heart normal—no bruit. I found that the right heart extended three inches from mid-sternum. Asked a cardiac specialist to examine him independently. He came to the same conclusion. He kindly examined again after I had voided the abdominal pool. The right heart had receded half-an-inch, and the cyanosed lips were then ruddy and the pallid face looked much more rosy. A consideration of the appended cutting from Treat- ment, of April 13, 1899, [Rebman Pub. Co.], makes it seem likely that the carefully regulated use of profound inspiration, with retention, may prove to be of value in assuaging the severe pain known as biliary colic. The writer has seen this condition instantly relieved by the use of Greville's thermo-electric saddle-back. The heat (300°F.) caused a copious flow of bile, which evidently washed out the obstruction, having relaxed the spasm of the common bile-duct. Dr. P. J. Mobius, of Leipzig, who for the last seven years has been subject to attacks of Hepatalgia, probably due to biliary lithiasis, has succeeded in moderating the painful paroxysms by deep, slow inspiration. Each in- spiratory movement lasts about five seconds, and the chest is then maintained in a condition of full expansion for from fifteen to thirty seconds. During this time the lower edge of the liver is depressed about five centimetres. Thanks to this ' inspiratory massage of the liver,' Dr. Mobius often succeeds in warding off slight attacks of hepatic colic, and in obtaining more or less relief during the progress of others.