Diseases of the throat and lungs / by R.T. Trall.

  • Trall, R. T. (Russell Thacher), 1812-1877.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the throat and lungs / by R.T. Trall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    sarily be very mischievous. The chief difficulty in the lungs is obstruction, and their great need is expansion—exercise. The respiratory muscles should have the freest possible play at all times, to facilitate circulation through the pulmonary tissues, and obviate accumulation and over-distension. Blisters, by inflaming the surface and muscles of the chest, render the ex- pansive efforts of the lungs painful; hence, the patient inclines to breathe as little as possible; and a succession of blisters never fails to aggravate very greatly the dangers of the disease. After all, consumption is a disease to be prevented rather than cured. The best measures judiciously applied will sometimes fail. With some per- sons the development of the disease is the sure harbinger of death. For- tunately, however, the means which are best calculated to arrest the prog- ress of the disease are the most efficient preventives. A reasonable attention to hygiene will insure almost any person against all danger of ever falling a victim to this, the prevailing malady of our country. It may not be amiss to advert briefly, in this place, to the recent popular nostrums which are flooding the markets as specifics for consumption—the hypophosphites of lime, soda, and mngnesia, the preparations of iron, and of cod-liver oil, and other “ blood-foods.” It would seem that the hundred- and-one remedies which are constantly before the public as infallible reme- dies, and the hundreds of vaunted specifics which have occupied so large a space in the advertising department of the newspaper press during the last quarter of a century, connected with the fact that the disease is constantly increasing in fatali'y—its victims increasing in a greater ratio than the advance of population—ought to convince all reflecting minds that the whole business of manufacturing and selling remedies for consumption, is now, and has been from the beginning, and will be so long as it will pay, a fraud and a cheat. All of these nostrums are put forward by their shrewd fabricators on some whim, prejudice, or false notion of the popular mind. But some of them are exceedingly specious in their representations and pretensions. This is particularly the case with the “ blood-food” nostrums. It is claimed for them that they supply some element —phosphorous, iron, etc.—which the living organism needs for the healthy performance of its functions Their use is predicated on the ground that they are really ftrlilizers, the same as manure is to plants, or inorganic elements to vegetables. A correct physiology will dissipate all such notions in a moment. Ani- mals do not and can not get nutrient materials from inorganic elements. They must subsist wholly on the proximate elements of organized matter. No matter to what extent phosphorous, lime, iron, soda, etc., are deficient, the living organism can not obtain anything it needs or can use f'om the administration of these substances in their elementary state. As phos- phorous, iron, alkalies, earth, etc., they arc poisons, and nothing but poisons, and ns such will bo rebelled against and rejected by the vital machinery. For this reason they are called medicines. As they exist in the proximate principles of grains, fruits, vegetables, or in animal matters,