A new and successful method of curing rheumatism and the contractions of the joints and restoring lost muscular power / by Alfred King.

  • King, Alfred.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new and successful method of curing rheumatism and the contractions of the joints and restoring lost muscular power / by Alfred King. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tenderness ; tlie ligaments are thickened and con¬ tracted. This happens chiefly at the ankle and knee-joints. In cases of this kind medicine is of little or no use. Miserable lameness in youth and persons of middle age has frequently come under my care, which in a few days was so much relieved by the new mode of treatment, that these patients were able to walk without assistance. It may with truth be affirmed that there never was an improvement made in the practice of medi¬ cine or surgery that did not meet with some oppo¬ sition ; even Harvey himself is said to have lost much of his practice by discovering the circulation of the blood, and Jenner suffered in a like manner. I am well aware that compression and percussion may be objected to in rheumatism on the ground that they may repel the disease to an internal part. But the objection has no foundation whatever either in fact or in the nature of things. I have cured lameness in gout in many instances, so that the patients were enabled to take that degree of exer¬ cise which quickly restored them to perfect health. Instead of repelling, the treatment I adopt creates a renewal of nervous energy to the part; thus, vessels in a torpid state are roused into action and the circulation restored; the bandages and medi¬ cated pressure support the vessels and enable them