The treatment of disease by physical methods / by Thomas Stretch Dowse.

  • Dowse, Thomas Stretch
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The treatment of disease by physical methods / by Thomas Stretch Dowse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    we have to calculate the amount of force which is required to overcome the resistance which the tissues offer according to their condition and according to their vitality and susceptibility, this clearly becomes a very important matter for consideration. When a force causes the motion of a mass, it denotes, and the work accomplished in a given time is called power. The masseur working, say at the arm of his patient, energizes the tissues by the force which he expends being converted into motion, and the resistance overcome will be equivalent to the force transmitted. The work done must be equivalent to the power employed. If the work be properly effected, there can be no creation and no destruction, either of matter or motion. It is only the conversion of motion into another form or phase. We will say, for instance, a force F cuts against and overcomes a resistance R, the work done by T^must equal the work done by R. If Fd = Rd d and d represent the respective distances through which Fand R work, d F Fd = Rd and — = —, or the distances moved through by each d R force are inversely as the forces. Pressure, as we employ it in petrissage, gives rise to stress and tension; for instance, when two forces act and react upon a body or upon a particle, they are together called a stress. Their effect upon that which is acted upon is a strain. Stress and strain are correlated as the active and passive phases of the same phenomenon or as cause and effect. If the force acting and the force reacting tend towards each other, the stress is a pressure; if they tend away irom each other, the stress is a tension. From what I have said concerning the leading principles of mechanics, kinematic and dynamic, you will, I hope, see that these are essentially associated with the science of motion and the science of force, as applied to the operative procedures of massage, which we know by the terms Effleurage, Petrissage, Tapotement and Friction. The Physiological Effects of Massage upon the heart and circulation are further considered in the last lecture. I will now call your attention to points of greater interest, namely, to the effects of these mechanical processes by massage upon the human body, upon the living tissues which are constantly and unceasingly transforming forces, forces of which we know something, and forces of which we know nothing. But this cosmic conception ot physical and vital forces bound up in life organization, and the subjective phenomena of existence, involves material for thought and speculative theories which are within as well as without our present knowledge of physiology; and all we have to deal with, in fact all that we can deal with here, must be that which the science of life and disease is constantly imparting to our observa-
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