Cleft palate and adenoids : treatment of simple fractures by operation : diseases of joints : operative treatment of cancer : acquired deformities : antrectomyernia, etc. / W. Arbuthnot Lane.

  • Sir William Arbuthnot-Lane, 1st Baronet
Date:
[1900]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cleft palate and adenoids : treatment of simple fractures by operation : diseases of joints : operative treatment of cancer : acquired deformities : antrectomyernia, etc. / W. Arbuthnot Lane. 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.

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    and medical men have educated their patients to fix theirs largely upon the rate at which the products of digestion pass along the intestinal tract, and it is generally assumed that there should be a daily evacuation. I hardly ever find that any attention has been bestowed upon the manner and character of the respiratory process, though it is of infinitely greater importance to the patient; indeed, constipa- tion frequently and readily results as a natural sequence both directly and indirectly from imperfect oxygenation. Too often one finds that the patient who performs no thoracic respiration whatever has the spine fixed in a position of extension by a steel support, or by some form of brace j while at other times exercises are ordered which rapidly exhaust the imperfect capital of oxygen without adding to it appreciably. This all results from an imperfect knowledge of the mechanics of the respiratory process, and es]3ecially of the important part which the spinal column takes in it. The physiologist has misled the profession chiefly by his attem|3ts at illustrating the respiratory process by means of a mechanism in which the spinal column is represented as a rigid immoveable rod. As is too often the case, the generally received teaching is absolutely false, since the variations in the spinal column are much more conspicuous than those of the rest of the wall of the thorax. I would, therefore, urge that the mode in which the organism is supplied with oxygen should receive at least as much attention as the rate at which the sewage products are evacuated from the body. If this is done, and done well, adenoids, the several