The principles and practice of hydrotherapy : a guide to the application of water in disease for students and practitioners of medicine / by Simon Baruch ... ; with numerous illustrations.
- Simon Baruch
- Date:
- 1898
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The principles and practice of hydrotherapy : a guide to the application of water in disease for students and practitioners of medicine / by Simon Baruch ... ; with numerous illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![The diminution in the size of the spleen and the increase in blood pressure and tone of vessels after cold application to the body surface have been proven for some time. Is it not possible, asks Winternitz, that the leucocytes may thus be driven forth into the blood current in increased number from spleen and liver and bone marrow? Dr. William Sydney Thayer, of Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, claims that these observations confirm his own results from experiments made upon himself. He took a bath of 70° F., of twenty minutes' duration, which was followed by pleasant reaction, without shivering, the skin being red and warm. The blood cells were counted immediately before the bath, and again fifteen minutes later, with the result of 10,333 leucocytes before and 12,333 after the bath. A second bath, somewhat colder, produced shivering, the ears being cold, the skin livid. He shivered and did not react well. The count made just before the bath of twenty minutes showed only 3,250 (?) leucocytes, and two minutes after the bath showed 12,500, an enormous increase, which it is difficult to account for. The count after these two baths was not, as will be seen above, made under the same conditions; but a second count made fifteen minutes after the second bath, when Dr. Thayer was still shivering, still showed 10,250 leu- cocytes, threefold the original number. Further investigations were made by Dr. Alois Strasser, * by request of Professor Winternitz. The blood was taken from individuals before rising, hence before taking food, and again at different periods follow- ing the hydriatic procedure. Examinations were made with care, and controlled so as to exclude error, as far as possible. Fleischl's hsernom- eter with 0.6 salt solution was used for haemoglobin measurement, and the Thoma-Zeiss apparatus, 2.5 per cent bichromate-of-potassium solu- tion for the red, and 0.1 per cent iced vinegar for the white corpuscles. The proportion of dilution of the blood was always 0.5 to 101. The individuals experimented on were healthy or slightly indisposed, and the countings were made by several assistants, and accepted only when they agreed. The result was (after all thermic and mechanical pro- cedures acting upon the whole surface, as in cold sheet baths, plunges, half-baths, all kinds of douches, hot-air baths followed by cold pro- cedures, alternating hot and cold [Scotch] douches, cold full baths with rare exceptions) an increase of red blood cells in blood taken from the point of the finger or lobe of the ear. The leucocytes, almost with- out exception, also increased, as did the haemoglobin. The maximum increase of red blood cells amounted in fifty-six individuals to 1,860,000 in the cubic millimeter; the maximum leucocyte increase was almost threefold, the maximum increase of haemoglobin fourteen per cent. * Blatter fur klinische Hydrotherapie, November, 1893. 4](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21034825_0063.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
