Respiratory exercises in the treatment of disease : notably of the heart, lungs, nervous and digestive systems / by Harry Campbell.

  • Campbell, Harry, 1860-1938.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Respiratory exercises in the treatment of disease : notably of the heart, lungs, nervous and digestive systems / by Harry Campbell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    (c) There is, as Leonard Hill has so well shown, a tendency for the blood to accumulate in the splanchnic area, with consequent syncope. The great sphinchnic veins, Hke tlie veins in general, are very susceptible to pressure, and the amount of blood they contain is largely dependent upon the pressure the abdominal walls exert upon them. Thus, a large quantity of blood may be squeezed out of them by simply pressing the belly firmly with the hand. Now, owing to the influence of gravity, the blood is very apt to accumulate in the splanchnic veins in the upright position ; and it is not, therefore, surprising that women, who so frequently suffer from abdominal flaccidity from the combined influences of child-bearing, tight-lacing, and bodily inactivity, should be prone to faintness or actually to faint, especially when the stays are removed. I have myself known of more than one instance of a woman fainting upon the removal of her stays. The same thing may happen, and for a similar reason, when a large quantity of ascitic fluid is suddenly removed, or even after emptying the bladder in the upright position—especially, as Lauder Brunton observes, if a patient with aortic regurgitation suddenly gets out of bed to do this. Stays correct the evil in question while they are on, but the most efficient stays are natural ones, in the shape of well-developed abdominal muscles. Li the normal subject the transversales in the upright position keep the anterior and posterior abdominal walls in firm contact, and prevent the undue accumulation, through gravity, of blood in the splanchnic area. Such an accumulation, with its consequent faintness, often occurs when a patient first gets up after having lain in bed for a long time. Leonard Hill attributes this to failure, through disuse, of the regulating vaso-motor action of the splanchnic vessels, which normally com- pensates for the effects of gravity in the upright position ;