The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 194 of 653worst paroxysms of cough. [We think that these precautions areexaggerated ; carpets, if kept clean and free from dust, have manadvantages over bare floors, and oil or kerosene irritatep the aipassages a great deal more than pure gas. H.]As a rule food has no great influence over the course of thedisease. Knowing, however, that the digestive organs becomeeasily involved in the morbid process, we are bound to protectthem with becoming care. It is only if the disease causes emaciation, that a nourishing diet is indispensable and that the cautious and moderate use of fat is quite proper, whereas farinaceouarticles of diet should be restricted as much as possible. In thecase of children especially the proper diet has to be prescribedwith great definiteness; despite the prejudice that milk overloadthe system with mucus, milk ought to constitute their chief nourishment; for chronic catarrh is really met with only among childrwith diseased constitutions, and it is in their case especially tthe deleterious influence of catarrh upon the constitution is besperceived.In conclusion we will add a few words regarding the use of particular places, the climate of which is supposed to exert a benefinfluence over the health of invalids. "We do not deem it advisabto remove patients from their habitual home and climate so longas they may be able to recover their health at home ; moreover awarm climate is not very favorable to uncomplicated bronchialcatarrh. We may be able to do much better in our immediateneighborhood. The sojourn in mid-mountain woodlands is notonly a palliative, but very often a genuine curative remedy for every serious pulmonary diseases. This statement has been verifiedto us during the last years of our practice by so many irrefutablproofs that we do not intei^d to send away a single patient whohas not first tried the influence of mountain-air in his own neig224 Diseases of the Lungs.borhood. This air stimulates the lungs so powerfully that theresult leads us to infer that even an existing emphysema maydecrease under its agency, at the same time as the whole bodyseems to become invigorated by the change. More recently theresults obtained by a sojourn in artificially compressed air haveclaimed the attention of the profession. Our own investigationsand the results we have been able to achieve in our own practice,have satisfied us that this method of treatment has a distinguishfuture before it; we cannot with sufiicient force urge upon ourprofessional brethren the importance of acquiring a thorough knowedge of these new methods.We cannot undertake to recommend particular spas for thereason that the curative virtues w^hich are claimed for them arenot expressed with a sufficiently definite scientific precision.predilection of lay-people for the spas of Ems and others is undoedly very great, but the benefit derived from them is very questionable and is very frequently owing to the fact that the warmwater which is drank early in the morning, promotes the solutionof the mucus, but probably no more so than plain warm waterwould have done.http://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt