Philosophy of Osteopathy by Andrew Taylor Still (android e book reader .TXT) 📕

Suppose the nerves that supply the lungs with motion should stop, the lungs would stop also; suppose they should half stop, the lungs would surely half stop. Now we must reason, if we succeed in relieving lungs, that all kinds of nerves are found in them. The lungs move, thus you find motor; they have feeling, thus the sensory; they grow by nutrition, (thus the nutrient nerves;) they move by will, or without it; they have a voluntary and involuntary system; they move in sleep by the involuntary system.

The blood supply comes under the motor system of nerves, and delivers at proper places for the convenience of the nerves of nutrition. The sensory nerves limit the supply of arterial blood to the quantity necessary, as the construction is going on by each successive stroke of the heart. They limit the action of the lungs, receive and expel air in quantities sufficient to keep up purity of the blood, etc. With this foundation we observe if too great action of the motor nerves, shows by breathing too often to be normal, we are admonished to reduce breathing by addressing attention to the sensory nerves of lungs, in order that the blood may pass through the veins, whose irritability has refused to receive the blood, farther than arterial terminals. So soon as sensation is reduced relaxation of nerve fibers of veins tolerates the passage of venous blood, which is deposited in the spongy portions of the lungs in such quantities as to overcome the activity of the nerves of renovation that accompanies the fascia in its process of ejection of all fluids that have been detained an abnormal time, first in the region of the fascia, then in the arterial and venous circulation. Thus you see what must be done. The veins as channels must carry away all blood as soon as it has deposited its nutrient supplies to the places for which it is constructed, otherwise, by delay vitality by asphyxia is lost to the blood which calls a greater force of the arterial pumps to drive the blood through the parts, ruptures its capillaries and deposits the blood in the mucous membrane; until nerves of the fascia becomes powerless by surrounding pressure, which causes through the sensory nerves an irritability at the heart, which puts in force all its powers of motion.

Webster's definition of tumefaction is to swell by any fluids or solids being detained abnormally at any place in the body.

The location may be in, or on any part of the system. No part is exempt; even the brain, heart, lungs, liver, stomach and bowels, bladder, kidneys, uterus, lymphatics, glands, nerves, veins, arteries, skin and all membranes are subject to swellings locally or generally, and with equal certainty they perish and shrink away. If either condition should exist death to the parts or all of the body will occur from want of nutrition. Instance, in lung fever which begins when swelling is established in lymphatics of lungs, trachea, nostrils, throat and face. At once you see the pressure on the nerve fibers compressed to such degree that they cannot operate excretories of lungs or any part of the pulmonary, system. Veins, suspended by irritation of the nerves, arteries are excited to fever heat in action with increase of tumefaction. A tumefying condition undoubtedly marks the beginning of all catarrhal diseases. Its ravages extend to the diseases of the fall and winter seasons. They are so marked on examination that the most skeptical cannot dispute or doubt the truth of this position. In fact he is already committed to a belief that there is something in the fluids that he must purify by the chemical process of drugs.

He looks on, and treats winter diseases with powerful purgatives, sweats, blisters, hot and cold applications with a view to remove congesting fluids. He is not very certain which team of medical power he can depend on. He hitches up many kinds of drugs hoping that a few of them may be able to carry the burden. He bridles his horses with opium, loads them down with purgative powders, and whips them through with castor oil, and for fear they will not travel fast enough he uses as a spur a delicately formed instrument known as the hypodermic syringe. He punches and prods until his horses fall exhausted. Disease and death should give him a large pension for the assistance he has rendered in their service. All is guess work whose father and mother are "Tradition and Ignorance." Ignorance of the kind that is wholly inexcusable to anyone but a medical doctor. An Osteopath who does not understand the general law of tumefaction of the whole system is not excusable from the fact that tumefaction, disease and death are so plainly written on the face of all diseases that the blind need not have eyes to see, nor the philosopher any brain to enable him to know this foundation is the highest known truth of all man's intellectual possessions. Thus by the law of tumefaction, death can and does succumb to its indomitable will. Observations without record will show any fair minded person that tumefaction does cause death in the majority of cases. But another power is equally as effective in destruction of life which is just the reverse of tumefaction. It destroys by withholding nutrition and all of the fluids; the effect is starvation, shrinkage and death. Thus you see it is equally certain in results. In the one case death ensues from an overplus of unappropriated fluids of nutrition, in the other there is no appropriation to sustain animal life and the patient dies from starvation. The same law holds good in the parts as well as in the whole body.