Diseases of the kidneys and of the spleen, hemorrhagic diseases / by H. Senator and M. Litten ; edited, with additions by James B. Herrick ; authorized translation from the German, under the editorial supervison of Alfred Stengel.

  • Senator, H. (Hermann), 1834-1911.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the kidneys and of the spleen, hemorrhagic diseases / by H. Senator and M. Litten ; edited, with additions by James B. Herrick ; authorized translation from the German, under the editorial supervison of Alfred Stengel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    102/858 (page 90)
    If hot-air baths are used, it has been the writer's experience that all other kinds of baths, especially tub baths, may be dispensed with. If desired, however, they may be employed after the method prescribed by Liebermeister,^ which is a very convenient one, the temperature of the water at first being 37° to 38° C. (98.6°-100.4° F.), and by the grad- ual addition of hot water raised to 41° or 42° C. (105.8°-107.6° F.). After the patient has been in the tub for half an hour or longer, during which time the head is to be covered with cold compresses to prevent congestion, he is wrapped in a blanket which has been previously warmed, put back into bed, and well covered up with additional blankets or feather beds. After he has perspired from one to three hours he is well rubbed down and changed to another, previously warmed, bed. The abstraction of water by perspiration during this procedure may be quite considerable, but the method is heroic and not well borne by patients with weak hearts who are suffering from dyspnea. For cases of the latter class, if hot-air baths are not available, the hot wet 2^cick advised by v. Ziemssen,^ and consisting in wrapping the patient in sheets wrung out of hot water and covering him with woollen blankets, is to be recommended. Partial baths and pmiial pacJcs, while much less exhausting and therefore applicable without hesitation in every case, are also less effec- tive. A half-bath consists in subjecting the abdomen or the lower extremities to the same treatment as in the full bath after Liebermeister. A half-pack is administered by treating the entire lower half of the body or the trunk, or even the lower extremities alone, after the method prescribed by v. Ziemssen. Hot sand can also be used conveniently for the purpose of administering partial baths, especially to the extremities; and finally there are various kinds of apparatus for hot-air baths to individual portions of the body as well as for the entire body which can be readily used on bedfast patients. [Another excellent way of giving a sweat to a bed patient is to place over and beneath him blankets or, better still, blankets and rubber sheets and then surround him by hot bricks placed under the blankets, care, of course, being taken not to burn the patient by bringing them directly against the unprotected body. Alcohol can also be poured over the bricks. The body is soon bathed in perspiration, and after twenty minutes to an hour the bricks are removed, the patient rubbed dry, and dry bedclothing substituted for the wet. Leube's advice to give the patient who is to take a sweat a liberal drink of water is, we believe, good. Pilocarpin can be given hypodermically just before a sweat, though, as stated by the author, it is a heart depressant, and we prefer to give it only in obstinate cases, where sweating is induced with difficulty by the ordinary measures, and then only in doses of ^ gr. or less. Increased bronchial secretion with weak heart makes the danger from edema of the lung a dreaded reality when too large does are given.—Ed.] On the other hand, the internal diaphoretics which were freely used ^ Prager Vierteljahrs., Ixxii., p. 1. ^ Deutsch. Arch.f. klin. Med., ii., 1867, p. 1.