|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 16
"I was struck with the extent to which these evils may go, in the case
of Mrs. P., �t. 52, who was brought to me from New Jersey, having been
in bed fifteen years. I soon knew that she was free of grave disease,
and had stayed in bed at first because there was some lack of power and
much pain on rising, and at last because she had the firm belief that
she could not walk. After a week's massage I made her get up. I had won
her full trust, and she obeyed, or tried to obey me, like a child. But
she would faint and grow deadly pale, even if seated a short time. The
heart-beats rose from sixty to one hundred and thirty, and grew feeble;
the breath came fast, and she had to lie down at once. Her skin was
dry, sallow, and bloodless, her muscles flabby; and when, at last, after
a fortnight more, I set her on her feet again, she had to endure for a
time the most dreadful vertigo and alarming palpitations of the heart,
while her feet, in a few minutes of feeble walking, would swell so as to
present the most strange appearance. By and by all this went away, and
in a month she could walk, sit up, sew, read, and, in a word, live like
others. She went home a well-cured woman.
"Let us think, then, when we put a person in bed, that we are lessening
the heart-beats some twenty a minute, nearly a third; that we are
causing the tardy blood to linger in the by-ways of the blood-round, for
it has its by-ways; that rest in bed binds the bowels, and tends to
destroy the desire to eat; and that muscles at rest too long get to be
unhealthy and shrunken in substance. Bear these ills in mind, and be
ready to meet them, and we shall have answered the hard question of how
to help by rest without hurt to the patient."
When I first made use of this treatment I allowed my patients to get up
too suddenly, and in some cases I thus brought on relapses and a return
of the feeling of painful fatigue. I also saw in some of these cases
what I still see at times under like circumstances,--a rapid loss of
flesh.
I now begin by permitting the patient to sit up in bed, then to feed
herself, and next to sit up out of bed a few minutes at bedtime. In a
week, she is desired to sit up fifteen minutes twice a day, and this is
gradually increased until, at the end of six to twelve weeks, she rests
on the bed only three to five hours daily. Even after she moves about
and goes out, I insist for two months on absolute repose at least two or
three hours daily, and this must be understood to mean seclusion as well
as bodily quiet, free from the intrusion of household cares, visitors,
or any form of emotion or excitement, pleasureable or otherwise. In
cases of long-standing it may be desirable to continue this period of
isolation and to order as well an hour's lying down after each meal for
many months, in some such methodical way as is suggested in the schedule
on page 64.
The use of a hammock is found by some people to be a very agreeable
change from the bed during a part of the day.
The physician who discharges his patient when she rises from her bed
after her two or three months' treatment, or who neglects to consider
the moral and mental needs and aspects of each case, will find that many
will relapse. Even when the patient has left the direct care of the
doctor and returned to home and its avocations she will find help and
comfort in the knowledge that she can apply to him if necessary, and it
is well to hold some sort of relation by occasional visits or
correspondence, however brief, for six months or a year after treatment
has been completed.
CHAPTER VI.
MASSAGE.
How to deprive rest of its evils is the title with which I might very
well have labelled this chapter. I have pointed out what I mean by rest,
how it hurts, and how it seems to help; and, as I believe that it is
useful in most cases only if employed in conjunction with other means,
the study of these becomes of the first importance.
The two aids which by degrees I learned to call upon with confidence to
enable me to use rest without doing harm are massage and electricity. We
have first to deal with massage, and I give some care to the description
of details, because even now it is imperfectly understood in this
country, and because I wish to emphasize some facts about it which are
not well known, I think, on either side of the Atlantic.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|