The anatriptic art : a history of the art termed anatripsis by Hippocrates, tripsis by Galen, frictio by Celsus, manipulation by Beveridge, and medical rubbing in ordinary language, from the earliest times to the present day : followed by an account of its virtues in the cure of disease and maintenance of health, with illustrative cases / by Walter Johnson.

Johnson, Walter

Date:: 1866

Credit: The anatriptic art : a history of the art termed anatripsis by Hippocrates, tripsis by Galen, frictio by Celsus, manipulation by Beveridge, and medical rubbing in ordinary language, from the earliest times to the present day : followed by an account of its virtues in the cure of disease and maintenance of health, with illustrative cases / by Walter Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

40/144 page 26

$and small intestines. And the places prepared for the reception of the expressed excretions are the whole broad space of the belly, and the cavities of the intestines therein situated. But if you leave the muscles of the abdomen wholly inactive, you will evacuate the excretions of some of these, but those of the chest and lungs you will transfer downwards. But it is better for them to be driven below, rather than remain in the latter, inasmuch as the evacuation of the contents of the abdomen is readier than that of the contents of the chest and lungs; for the former are vomited and ejected with ease, but the latter are cast out with effort, and force, and cough. But if any one, equally with the diaphragm, contract the abdominal muscles when holding his breath, the organs below the diaphragm will be more accurately purged, but he will transfer nothing from the organs of respiration to those of the food; but all their secretions will remain in the chest and lungs. Therefore, in truth I am unable to commend this kind of holding of the breath, and still less when a person not altogether contracting the diaphragm, draws the muscles of the abdomen strongly and forcibly tight. For in this case the vessels and parts of the neck must needs be filled with blood and spirits,—\_The vital spirits were supposed to be a thin kind of air> which permeated the whole body; their existence is denied by modern physiology,']—and the excre- tions be borne upwards and towards the head, and not downwards into the abdomen. For we may see the same thing in flute players, and in those who speak very loudly or shrilly; for their whole neck is expanded, and their forehead swells, and the head is violently filled, because in this action the muscles of the abdomen are contracted, and the diaphragm yields to them.$

Licence and re-use

Contents