Observations on the causes and early symptoms of defects in the form of the spine, chest, and shoulders, and on the means of correcting them : with remarks on the different methods pursued in this country and on the continent, in the treatment of distortions : being an enlarged edition of the papers lately published in the London Medical Joural / by John Shaw.

  • Shaw, John, 1792-1827.
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the causes and early symptoms of defects in the form of the spine, chest, and shoulders, and on the means of correcting them : with remarks on the different methods pursued in this country and on the continent, in the treatment of distortions : being an enlarged edition of the papers lately published in the London Medical Joural / by John Shaw. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    PLAN OF TREATING DISTORTIONS BY CONFINE- MENT TO THE HORIZONTAL OR INCLINED PLANE. The plan of rigorous confinement to one po- sition is founded on the idea that the muscles of the spine are debilitated, and act irregularly, in consequence of irritation or disease of the vertebree, and that repose is necessary to subdue this irritation, and to restore the muscles to a natural condition. I believe that, in nineteen of twenty cases of lateral curvature, there is no disease of the vertebree; that the pain in the back and shoulder, supposed to be indicative of disease, may be relieved sooner by other means than by rest; and that there is sel- dom or never that peculiar wasting or spasmodic affection of the muscles which is so frequently observed where the ver- tebrae or ligaments are diseased. In those cases where the muscles of the spine ap- pear smaller than natural, it will be found that they either correspond with the con- c