Respiratory exercises in the treatment of disease : notably of the heart, lungs, nervous and digestive systems / by Harry Campbell.

  • Campbell, Harry, 1860-1938.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Respiratory exercises in the treatment of disease : notably of the heart, lungs, nervous and digestive systems / by Harry Campbell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    RESPIRATORY EXERCISES IN HEART DISEASE. Kespiratoky exercises are valuable adjuncts in the treatment of heart disease, for they favour the development of the lungs, and thereby diminish their tendency to disease—a tendency it is most important to check, owing to the extra work lung disease casts upon the right heart. The importance of securing the fullest possible development of the lungs in heart disease has been strangely overlooked. The more completely the lungs are developed, the more capacious is the pulmonary vascular system, and the less is the resist- ance which it opposes to the right heart, pulmonary resistance being in inverse ratio to pulmonary capacity. This fact is, indeed, instinctively taken advantage of in heart disease, in which we may frequently observe over- action of the inspiratory muscles and an increase in the mean size of the chest. Not only is the breathing area in this way increased, but the pulmonary vascular capacity also ; and hence the work of the right heart is diminished. Now, all organic cardiac disease, but especially mitral affections and primary disease of the right heart, tend to cast extra work upon the right side ; and it is, therefore, of the utmost importance in all cases of heart disease to secure the maximum development of the lungs. Consider, for instance, what happens in mitral disease. In both ob- struction and leakage at the mitral orifice the pressure in