On the technology of mechano-therapy and resistance movements in the treatment of heart disease / by Thomas Stretch Dowse.

  • Dowse, Thomas Stretch.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the technology of mechano-therapy and resistance movements in the treatment of heart disease / by Thomas Stretch Dowse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    based entirely upon my own judgment, derived from a thoughtful and observant experience. I need scarcely say that in some organic forms of heart failure, anything like rough treatment would probably lead to troublesome results. There is a kind of manipulation which is, I think, superior to all others in improving the circulation, which is called Vibratory Petrissage. It is a manipulation associated with considerable rapidity and lightness, and with partial rotation of the wrist. For instance, A mass of flesh is grasped firmly between the thumb and the fingers of the right hand, and exposed to a series of rapid gyratory shakings with some pressure (the muscle of course being made as lax as possible by the position of the limb), whilst the left hand is employed in pushing forward to the right hand the fleshy substance of the part so that°the graspings may be the more completely accomplished. According to my idea the oxygen is more readily dislocated from the oxyhemoglobin by this means than by any other, and in this manner internal respiration is most thoroughly effected and lessened resistance in the arterioles and the capillaries is more surely brought about than by the ordinary squeezing and kneading methods. Now I am not one of those ignorant twaddlers who talk of the science and art of massage as being something inextric- ably bound up with untold movements, but I do hold that if massage is to accomplish what I believe it is best capable of doing, namely, to bring about normal functional activity when it is more or less seriously impaired (and when drugs fail to attain this object), it requires greater practice and attention to details than some physicians are inclined to ascribe it. That I am a bit of an enthusiast concerning the valuable effects of massage, I am not inclined to deny, but I have never written or spoken of its potency in any other way than as an aid to treatment, and a powerful curative agent, for, as Dr. Lauder Brunton says, It is neither more nor less than the means by which nature itself keeps up the healthy nutrition of every organ in the body, when the utmost pains seem to have been expended upon mechanisms, whereby not only fresh nutriment should be supplied but waste products should be removed with greater or less speed according to the greater or less functional activity of each organ. INSTRUCTIONS TO THE MASSEUR. My instructions to the Masseur are as follows :—Place the patient upon a bed which is readily accessible in every direction, and have plenty of pillows close at hand to use as occasion requires, to prevent postural strain or discomfort; it is also necessary to have flannel wraps to cover the parts as the manipu- lations proceed, to prevent undue exposure. The head and shoulders are to be raised, according to the nature and urgency of