The physiology and therapeutics of the Harrogate waters, baths, and climate applied to the treatment of chronic disease / by William Bain and Wilfrid Edgecombe.

  • Bain, William
Date:
1905
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physiology and therapeutics of the Harrogate waters, baths, and climate applied to the treatment of chronic disease / by William Bain and Wilfrid Edgecombe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of heat requires less to be produced by metabolic pro- cesses for the maintenance of the norma] tempera- ture. <A corroborative fact is found in the diminished output of carbonic acid which occurs during the hot bath. The volume of a limb, as measured by the plethys- mograph, is increased after immersion in hot water ;' the increase, however, rapidly disappears, showing that it is mainly due to temporary afiluxion of blood to the part, and therein it differs from the increase in volume result- ing from exercise, which persists for a considerable period after cessation of movement. Coincidently with peripheral vaso-dilation there is a compensatory central vaso-constriction, whereby the cen- tral organs are rendered for the time more or less anzmice. This is shown by the experiments of Winternitz,? who found that a hot sitz bath caused a decrease in the volume of the arm, and by those of Schiiller,*? who found, in rabbits, that immersion of the body in warm water caused a dilatation of the vessels of the exposed pia mater, followed immediately by a constriction propor- tionate to the amount of the body immersed. These changes in blood-pressure, and in the distri- bution of the blood in the body, are accompanied by alterations in the state of the blood as estimated by the 1 Winternitz, Die Hydrotherapie auf physiologischer u. klinischer Grundlage, 1890. 2 Ueber thermische Wirkungen auf die Blutvertheilung in die Hydro- therapie, Band i., 1890. 3 Deutsche Archiv. fiir klinische Medecin, Band xiv. For a useful epitome of the experimental work on thermal therapeutics by Naiimann, Schiller, and de Mosso in animals, and by Winternitz, Istamanoff, de Mosso, and Bergesis in man, see Professor Hayem’s Lecons de Thérapeutique, les Agents Physiques et Naturels, 1894, or Hare’s translation of this work ; also Baruch, Hydrotherapy, 1904.