Exercise and food for pulmonary invalids.

  • Denison, Charles, 1845-1909.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Exercise and food for pulmonary invalids. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    18/78 (page 14)
    yet know the per cent, of tubercle bacilli which are killed by this process of immunization, the shrinkage of the affected lung tissues probably leaves the germs in the intervening or included spaces. These spaces must then be more or less open in the spongy lung because of the shrinkage mentioned. It is suicidal to do this only and then stop, or by forced inac- tivity of the respiratory apparatus to allow these germs to remain in conditions undoubtedly more favorable than before for reinfection and repro- duction. Exercise, commensurate with these specific effects, is the sine qua non of success. Hence, one important reason why better results have been achieved with tuberculin, tuberculocidin or antiphthisine in high altitudes than at sea level, especially more than in any hospital practice, is because life in high altitudes is an imperative and continued activity of the respiratory apparatus. There is to me a peculiar significance in the harmony of effects of altitude, hill-climbing, and tuberculin reaction upon slightly affected areas of lung tissue. The dryer, harsher, louder, and more tubular breath-sounds locally distinguished during the first few weeks' treatment are quite similar under all three of these conditions. During his recent visit to Colorado I was pleased to hear Dr. C. Theodore Williams of London say, as we were examining a patient who had been assiduously climbing hills at eight thousand