Health, disease and remedy familiarly & practically considered, in a few of their relations to the blood / [George Moore].

  • George Moore
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health, disease and remedy familiarly & practically considered, in a few of their relations to the blood / [George Moore]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mean of raising the temperature of the air admitted to the lungs, there are reasons, not a few, for believing that it has been too hastily and indiscri- minately adopted. In many cases it is valuable in allaying the irritation of the mucous membrane lining the throat and wind-pipe, and thus preventing or diminishing cough, but itis capable of doing mischief. When we consider that the action of the oxygen on the blood, and the removal of carbonic acid by breathing, is effected, according to the common law of diffusion, by which gases mix together inversely as the square roots of their densities, it is evident that to respire air warmed nearly to the temperature of the body must have an effect rather prejudicial than otherwise to the lungs. It is like breathing the air of the tropics while the exterior of the body may perhaps be exposed to a frosty temperature ; the lungs labour more, but with diminished power, and the consequence is often seen in a more hectic cheek, and increase of distress on taking even the slightest exercise. The habit of using such a guard on all occasions may, therefore, hurry on an inci- pient consumption, but can exert no positively cura- tive influence in any form of that disease—it can do nothing towards improving the constitutional con- dition. We should remember that the lungs always con- tain a reserve of air in their cells. In a healthy man this reserve amounts to nearly twelve pints, but in disease of the organs of respiration this quantity is greatly diminished, and in advanced consumption more than a half of the lungs often becomes useless,
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