“Nasal catarrh, diarrhœa, paralysis, marasmus, convulsive
movements, and finally the phenomena of asphyxia are also the
results of the same experiments. Cutaneous asphyxia may cause the
death of man and animals; in this affection, the blood presents, in
the highest degree, the refrigerant and stupefying qualities of
VEINOUS [9] blood.”
The above extracts are our answer to those superficial medical
objectors, who would argue that death is not occasioned, in the above
instances, by the exclusion of atmospheric air from the system, but by
the suppression of poisonous salts secreted in the skin. The effects of
the suppression of the most poisonous and irritating of these is well
known to the physician, but their phenomena bear no analogy to those
presented in the case before us, which exhibits all the symptoms and
appearance of true suffocation. If, however, the evidence of these
experiments be not sufficient to convince them, that a deficient supply
of air, producing suffocating symptoms, was the real cause of death in
the above cases, we will be prepared to meet them on a more convenient
battle-field, where arguments, which would only prove tedious and
unintelligible to the non-professional reader, may be freely adduced in
support of our position.
Were it not tedious to multiply instances, many more might be adduced,
such as the dangerous stage of small-pox being contemporaneous with the
breaking of the pustules, when the surface of the body becomes
partially varnished over, and the fact that a scald or burn is
dangerous, not in proportion to its depth, but breadth.
Now, if it be conceded that the main cause of consumption, tracing the
disease back to its first cause, is to be found in an insufficient
supply of oxygen to the system (which certainly the success attendant
on the treatment based upon this theory would lead one to suppose), we
would beg of our readers seriously to ask themselves how can
consumption be cured by drugging, and how can the much required oxygen
be supplied to the blood by any proceeding of the kind? We think that
the results of such a system afford a conclusive answer to this
question; failure marking its course wherever it has been tried. Again,
as regards the fashionable remedy of going abroad, [10] how are we
likely to get more oxygen supplied to our blood by going abroad than by
staying at home? What magic is there in the process? A mild climate may
certainly prove less irritating than its native air to a diseased and
disordered lung, and the suffering and uneasiness consequent on the
irritation may be thereby allayed, but we are not a whit nearer being
cured by this device, nor have we, in so doing, properly gone to work
to remove the main spring and cause of the disease.
Let our readers bear in mind the following aphorism of Dr. Hall: “Close
bed rooms make the graves of multitudes;” let them recollect that
impure blood is the origin of consumption, and that impure air causes
impure blood.
Carrying out these principles, in curing consumption, Dr. Barter would
use all means to place the system in a favourable condition to receive
a full supply of oxygen, first, by a direct inhalation of a mixture of
oxygen and atmospheric air through the lungs; secondly, by enjoining a
large amount of active exercise in the open air, when practicable, and
sleeping at night with open windows; and thirdly, by inducing a healthy
action of the skin, [11] and consequent supply, through it, of oxygen
to the blood, by the intervention of the Turkish bath. This mode of
treatment has, we believe, proved most successful, whilst the old mode
of treatment, of which it is the very antipodes, viz., keeping the
patient in a heated and impure atmosphere, swathing him with flannels,
[12] dosing him with prussic acid, and applying a respirator to the
mouth, has proved most unsuccessful and fatal. How it could ever have
entered into the brain of a physician to recommend the use of a
respirator, as a cure for consumption, we are at a loss to imagine, as
a more ingenious mode of shutting out the pure atmosphere, essential to
our existence, and exchanging it for one loaded with carbonic acid
(thus aggravating the disease which it seeks to cure), could not
possibly be devised. Man, in a state of health, requires pure air as a
condition of his existence; and can it be supposed that, in a state of
disease, he will be able, more successfully, to resist the effects of
poison on his system than when in a state of health? Will he, in a
state of disease, be strengthened and improved by the loss of that, on
a due supply of which, when well, the continuance of his health and
strength would depend? Does the experience of our readers furnish them
with a single case of recovery from consumption caused by the use of a
respirator, or does it not, on the contrary, furnish them, in every
case where it has been resorted to, with instances of the bad effects
attendant upon its use?
In support of the view taken by Dr. Barter, we would observe, that
narrow and contracted lungs, an impure atmosphere, uncleanly habits,
sedentary occupation, indulgence in alcoholic liquors, and over eating,
all directly tend to the overloading of the blood with carbon, and they
are also the most constant causes of consumption. But the success
attending this treatment is the argument which will have most weight
with the public, and cause its adoption by the profession at large.
When this takes place we shall not have consumptive patients sent
abroad to seek restoration of their health—
“To Nice, where more native persons die of consumption than in any
English town of equal population—to Madeira, where no local disease
is more prevalent than consumption—to Malta, where one-third of the
deaths amongst our troops are caused by consumption—to Naples,
whose hospitals record a mortality, from consumption, of one in two
and one-third of the patients—nor, finally, to Florence, where
pneumonia is said to be marked by a suffocating character, and a
rapid progress towards its final stage. Sir James Clarke has
assailed with much force the doctrine, that change of climate is
beneficial in cases of consumption. M. Carriere, a French
physician, has written strongly against it. Dr. Burgess, an eminent
Scotch physician, also contends that climate has little or nothing
to do with the cure of consumption, and that if it had, the
curative effects would be produced through the skin and not the
lungs, by opening the pores, and promoting a better aeration of the
blood.”
With respect to the administering of prussic acid, to lower the pulse
in consumption, we cannot TOO STRONGLY reprobate this mistaken
practice. Do physicians, when prescribing this poison, ever reflect
that this elevation of the pulse, which they employ themselves so
sedulously to lower, is an effort of nature to supply more oxygen to
the system by an increased action of the lungs, and that the more the
lungs are injured by disease, the greater is this compensating effort
of nature: just as a blacksmith must work a small or defective bellows
more rapidly than a large one, to keep his fire going. If this be the
case, the destructive effects of prussic acid will at once be evident,
since by it all the powers of the system become reduced, and nature’s
efforts at self-relief most mischievously obstructed. The feverish
action of the pulse is, in itself, of no moment; it is only as a
symptom of derangement in the system that it becomes alarming; it is
nature telling us that something is wrong by the very action which she
is establishing to cure it. What then must be thought of a practice
which silences the tell-tale pulse, stops the voice of nature, and
checks her curative efforts, without attempting to cure the disorder;
doing immense mischief, whilst it effects no good? The fact is, the
only reduction of the pulse which is worth a farthing, is that which
follows naturally from removing the cause of its elevation, viz., a
want of oxygen in the system. That the supplying of this want has the
effect of lowering the consumptive pulse, without the assistance of
prussic acid, is abundantly proved by the rapid fall of the pulse
produced by the Turkish bath,—a result most satisfactory to the
physiologist, as evidencing the soundness of the theory which
prescribes it as a remedy.
Having referred to the erroneous practice of swathing consumptive
patients in flannel, it may not be out of place here to make a few
observations on the origin of caloric in the animal system, and the
office of clothing in relation to it.
The only true source of caloric in animals, is that produced by the
chemical combination of oxygen with the carbon and other oxidizable
products of their system. Every cause which quickens and exalts this
chemical action increases the animal heat, whilst every interfering
cause produces cold and chilliness. It is in this way that drinking
cold water, or taking exercise in the open air, increases the warmth of
the body, by producing a healthy [13] waste of the system, and so
stimulating the chemical combustion within it. Clothing, it should be
recollected, has merely the effect of retaining animal heat and
preventing its dissipation, but it cannot, in the slightest degree,
create it: if, therefore, any thing occurs to interfere with that
action, by which heat can alone be generated, all the clothes in the
world will fail to warm us. How little these facts are reflected on, is
shown by the excessive and injurious amount of clothing worn by
delicate persons, which defeats the very object they are intended to
effect. These facts also explain the apparent paradox of patients who,
previous to undergoing the water system, complain of chilliness when
smothered with clothing, but who afterwards are enabled to wear very
light clothing, without any feeling of their former chilliness. [14] On
this subject Dr. Gully observes:—
“Should, however, the reader desire to learn the most effectual way
of destroying the power of generating animal heat, let him pursue
the plan which so many shivering patients who come to Malvern have
followed. Let him drink spirits and wine, eat condiments, swallow
purgatives, and especially mercurials, take a ‘course of iodine,’
and, as an occasional interlude, lose a little blood, and we stake
our reputation that he will shiver to his heart’s content, and find
himself many degrees lower in the scale of Fahrenheit than cold
water, cool air, early rising, and exercise can possibly make him.”
Before leaving this subject, we would entreat our readers seriously to
consider the observations we have addressed to them, and the facts
which we have adduced in support of the mode of treatment which we have
advocated. The subject is one of serious moment, since, on this disease
being rightly understood, the lives of millions of our countrymen
depend. If a rational mode of treatment be adopted, its fearful ravages
may be successfully encountered and stayed, but if not, the gaunt
spectre will stalk as hitherto, unchecked through the length and
breadth of our island, dealing death to millions of its sons.
With regard to water drinking, an important part of the Hydropathic
process, and against which much prejudice exists, the following
extracts from the pen of the justly celebrated Allopathic physician,
Sir Henry Holland, will not, we hope, be considered out of place. In
his work styled “Medical Notes and Reflections,” treating of
“Diluents,” he thus writes:
“Though there may seem little reason for considering these as a
separate class of remedies, yet I doubt whether the principles of
treatment implied in the name is sufficiently regarded in modern
practice. On the Continent, indeed, the use of diluents is much
more extensive than in England; and, under the form of mineral
waters especially, makes up in some countries a considerable part
of general practice. But putting aside all question as to mineral
ingredients in water, the consideration more expressly occurs, to
what extent and with what effects this great diluent, the only one
which really concerns the animal economy, may be introduced into
the system as a remedy? Looking at the definite proportion which,
in a healthy state, exists in all parts of the body between the
aqueous, saline, and animal ingredients—at the various organs
destined, directly or indirectly, to regulate the proportion—and at
the morbid results, occurring whenever it is materially altered—we
must admit the question as one very important in the animal
economy, and having various relation to the causes and treatment of
disease. Keeping in mind then this reference to the use of water as
an internal remedy, diluents may be viewed under three conditions
of probable usefulness:—First, the mere mechanical effect of
quantity of liquid in diluting and washing away matters,
excrementitious or noxious, from the alimentary canal;—secondly,
their influence in modifying certain morbid conditions of the
blood;—and thirdly, their effect upon various functions of
secretion and excretion, and especially upon those of the kidneys
and skin * * * The first is an obvious benefit in many cases, and
not to be disdained from any notion of its vulgar simplicity. It is
certain there are many states of the alimentary canal in which the
free use of water at stated times produces good, which cannot be
attained by other or stronger remedies. I have often known the
action of the bowels to be maintained with regularity for a long
period, simply by a tumbler of water, warm or cold, on an empty
stomach, in cases where medicine had almost lost its effect, or
become a source only of distressing irritation. The advantage of
such treatment is still more strongly attested, where the
secretions taking place into the intestines, or the products formed
there during digestion, become vitiated in kind. Here dilution
lessens that irritation to the membranes, which we cannot so
readily obviate by other means, and aids in removing the cause from
the body with less distress than any other remedy. In some cases,
where often and largely used, its effect goes farther in actually
altering the state of the secreting surfaces by direct application
to them. I mention these circumstances upon experience, having
often obtained much good from resorting to them in practice, when
stronger medicines and ordinary methods had proved of little avail.
Dilution thus used, for example, so as to act on the contents of
the bowels, is beneficial in many dyspeptic cases, where it is
especially an object to avoid needless irritation to the system.
Half-a-pint or more of water taken when fasting, at the temperature
most agreeable to the patient, will often be found to give singular
relief to his morbid sensations. * * * In reference to the
foregoing uses of diluents, it is to be kept in mind that the
lining of the alimentary canal is, to all intents, a surface, as
well as the skin, pretty nearly equal in extent; exercising some
similar functions, with others more appropriate to itself, and
capable in many respects of being acted upon in a similar manner.
As respects the subject before us, it is both expedient and correct
in many cases to regard diluents as acting on this internal surface
analogously to liquids on the skin. And I would apply this remark
not only to the mechanical effects of the remedy, but also to their
use as the medium for conveying cold to internal parts; a point of
practice which either the simplicity of the means, or the false
alarms besetting it, have hitherto prevented from being duly
regarded.”