Compressed air as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of consumption, asthma, chronic bronchitis and other diseases / by Archibald Simpson.

  • Simpson, Archibald, 1790-1847.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Compressed air as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of consumption, asthma, chronic bronchitis and other diseases / by Archibald Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE COMPRESSED-AIR BATH, AND ITS THERAPEUTIC EFFECTS. It seems not a little remarkable, that a mode of treatment of dis¬ eases of the chest, which seems to have been in successful operation in France for the last twenty years, and whose action is susceptible of at least as satisfactory an explanation as a great majority of the remedies we are daily in the habit of using, should have attracted so little the attention of the medical profession in this country. Beyond a few remarks by Dr Walshe, in a note to the second edition of his work on Diseases of the Lungs and Heart, and a review of the works on the subject by Bertin and Pravaz, in the British Journal of Homoeopathy for January 1856, we are not aware of any account in English of the use and effects of this agent. Much as has been done within the last half century, by the aid of physiological and pathological research, and clinical observation, to improve the treatment of the most prevalent and fatal class of dis¬ eases of our climate, it is still an imperative duty to inquire, in a candid and unprejudiced spirit, into the merits of any measures which scientific men, whether at home or abroad, have thought worth their while to try, and believe to have proved useful in their hands. Such is the case with the compressed-air bath, now for the first time introduced into this country by Dr Macleod of Ben Rhydding. We purpose, therefore, in the following pages, to give some account of the history of the use of condensed air in the treatment of disease, the mode of its application, its therapeutic effects, and in what dis¬ eases it is chiefly applicable. The idea that atmospheric air, altered in density, whether by ex¬ cess or diminution, is capable of producing therapeutic effects on the human body, is by no means of recent origin ; for, not to mention the local use of rarefied air in the application of cupping-glasses—a