Fat and blood : an essay on the treatment of certain forms of neurasthenia and hysteria / by S. Weir Mitchell.

  • Silas Weir Mitchell
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fat and blood : an essay on the treatment of certain forms of neurasthenia and hysteria / by S. Weir Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    not seen elsewhere any statement of the rather remarkable phenomena which they exemplify. It may be that a part at least of the thermal change is due to the muscular action, although this seems hardly competent to account for any large share in the alteration of temperature, and we must look further to explain it fully. ]No mental excitement can be called upon as a cause, since it continues after the patient is perfectly accustomed to the process. I should add, also, that in most cases the subject of the experiment was kept in ignorance of the fact that a rise of the thermometer was to be expected. Is it not possible that the current even of an induction battery has the power so to stimulate the tissues as to cause an increase in the ordinary rate of disintegrative change? Perhaps a careful study of the secretions might lend force to this sugges- tion. That the muscular action produced by the battery is not essential to the increase of bodily heat is shown by the next set of facts to which I desire to call attention. Some years ago, Messrs. Beard and Kockwell stated that when an induced current is used for fifteen to thirty minutes daily, one pole on the neck and one on either foot, or alternately on
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