New health for everyman / by Sir William Arbuthnot Lane.

  • Lane, William Arbuthnot, 1856-1943
Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: New health for everyman / by Sir William Arbuthnot Lane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    breathing exercises by the laryngologists was very bitter, and the most eminent of these specialists attacked me in public, since it was considered absurd in his opinion that the passage of air could exercise any influence whatever. However, breathing exercises were slowly but gradually recognised as efficient means of dealing with imperfect development and infections of the naso-pharynx, and are now in common use everywhere. This know- ledge led me to alter the treatment of cleft palate. At that time it was not considered correct to operate on these clefts till the child was four years old, so that during those four years the child was deprived of the beneficial action of those factors which determine the form of the face. On the assumption that every- thing that is supposed to be undoubtedly true is usually wrong, I devised special instruments which enabled me to operate on the child at birth. This I did with complete success, and for many years I was engaged in operating on cleft palates, since the mothers were delighted to have their children treated at once, while the surgical profession, with its usual attitude of inactivity and opposition, left these cases to me for many years, till time gradually educated them. The study of fractures convinced me of the