A handbook of therapeutics / by Sydney Ringer.

  • Ringer, Sydney, 1835-1910.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handbook of therapeutics / by Sydney Ringer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    59/596 (page 45)
    WARM AND HOT BATHS. The effects of heat on the body are, of course, for the most part, the opposite of cold. By surrounding- the body with a temperature higher than its own, destruction of the tissues by oxidation is considerably lessened. Moreover, experiment has shown that increased heat impedes or destroys the electric currents in the nerves, whence it may be fairly presumed they are less able to conduct impressions either to or from the brain. These two considerations may perhaps account for the enfeebling influence of heat on the body. On the General Warm Bath.—This bath if not too hot, is at first highly pleasurable, but throbbing at the heart and in the large vessels soon comes on, with beating in the head, and a sense of oppression and anxiety. However, when per- spiration breaks out these sensations are much lessened, or altogether cease. If the bath is continued, the foregoing sensations return, accompanied by great prostration, even to the extent of fainting. The pulse becomes greatly quickened and enfeebled, while the temperature of the body is raised very considerably, and, if the heat of the bath is great, may reach to even 104° Fah., that is, to a severe fever height. Warm baths are employed in Bright’s disease to increase the perspiration for the purpose of lessening the dropsy, and carrying off from the blood any deleterious matter retained in it by the inaction of the kidneys. But discretion must be used for they greatly reduce the patient’s strength, increasing the anaemia, and so may actually augment that general anasarca, to remove which the bath was employed. Much of the dropsy of Bright’s disease is due more to anaemia, than to the presence in the blood of poisonous ex- crementitious substances. As baths increase both the weak- ness and anaemia it is obvious that if injudiciously employed they will augment the general dropsy.