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

  • Dowse, Thomas Stretch
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    s massage will bring about its absorption. If, on the other hand, a patient should by heredity be fat, and he becomes lean, massage will in him promote the rapid development of fat: organic disease always excluded. If any excuse be needed to warrant and to justify my warmly advocating my system of massage, it is to be found in the simple fact, that my experience has proved it to be an agent of great regenerative power, an agent whose beneficial influence has not yet been duly appreciated, and an agent whose curative powers are most marked in those cases where other agents have signally failed to bring about a cure. Unfortunately for the great science of medicine it has no law. Effects are seen, causes are unknown. The more we study the simplest laws of nature in reference to functional activity, the more able shall we be to aid her when those functions are deranged. The secret of the success of any remedial agent depends entirely and absolutely upon the knowledge we possess of its definite and precise range of action under varying and variable conditions. Nothing but the most careful study of details can ever lead us to a successful issue. It we study carefully the effect of massage upon a paralyzed limb, say the paralyzed leg of this child suffering from ant. polio- myelitis, we shall see that several notable changes are brought about. Some are objective and some are subjective. We are now considering the local effects only. They are increased temperature and change of colour from that of lividity to a bright red. These changes are of course associated with increased oxidation, increased molecular activity, and increased sensibility, and metabolism. This morning I took the temperature of this child’s limb very carefully at the inner part of the leg (the temper- ature of the ward being 64°F.) and I found it was below 7o°E. After ten minutes’ manual petrissage the temperature of the limb had risen no less than i7°F. That is to say, the temperature before massage was under 7o°F. and after massage it was 87°F. We cannot over estimate the value of this increase of temperature. It indicates, as I have just said (especially when associated with a red healthy hue), increased metabolism and respiration of tissue. The reaction to the galvanic current before and after massage, in this form of paralysis, is of great interest. In this little child’s legs that I now exhibit to you we have a common instance of the usual reaction to faradization and to galvanism. In infantile paralysis, during the acute stage of degeneration, we find an hourly decreasing response to the faradic current, until in three or four days the muscles may entirely cease to respond to this form of electricity. When the child first came under my care, the reaction of degeneration was well marked, but by massage and galvanism the motor cells of the grey matter of
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