WHOOPING COUGH.
I have perused all the authority obtainable, advised with and counciled for information in reference to the cause of whooping cough until I am constrained to think, whether I say so or not, that I have had many additions of words during the conversation, and to use a homely phrase, less sense than I started out with. My tongue is tired, my brain exhausted, my hopes disappointed and my mind disgusted, that after so much effort to obtain some positive knowledge of the disease in question, which is whooping cough, that I have received nothing that would give me any light whatever pertaining to the subject. It winds up thus, that it may be a germ that irritates the pneumogastric nerve. I go off as blank and empty as the fish lakes on the moon. I supposed writers would say something in reference to the irritating influence of this disease on the nerves and muscles that would contract or convulsively shorten the muscles that attach at the one end to the os hyoid, and at the other end at various points along the neck, and force the hyoid back against the pneumogastric nerve, hypoglossal, cervical, or some other nerve that would be irritated by such pressure on nerves by the os hyoid, when pulled back and held against such nerves. The above picture will give the reader some idea why I became so thoroughly disgusted with the heaps of compiled trash. I say trash because there was not a single truth, great or small, to guide me in search of the desired knowledge. And at this point I will say on my first exploration I found all of the nerves and muscles that attach to the os hyoid at any point contracted, shortened and pulling the hyoid back to and pressing against the pneumogastric nerve, and all the nerves in that vicinity. Also each and every muscle was in a hard and contracted condition in the region of this portion of the trachea, and extended up and into the back part of the tongue. Then I satisfied myself that this irritable condition of the muscles was possibly the cause of the spasms of the trachea during the convulsive cough. I proceeded at once with my hand guided by my judgment to suspend or stop for awhile the action of the nerves of sensation that go with and control the muscles of the machinery which conducts air to and from the lungs. That my first effort while acting upon this philosophy was a complete relaxation of all muscles and fibers of that part of the neck, and when they relaxed their hold upon the respiratory machinery the breathing became normal. I have been asked what bone I would pull when treating whooping cough? My answer would be, the bones that held by attachment the muscles of the hyoid system in such irritable condition that begin with the atlas and terminate with the sacrum. To him who has been a willing student of the American School of Osteopathy the successful management of whooping cough should be absolute, reliable and successful in all cases, when taken for treatment in anything like, a reasonable time.
CLOUDS AND LUNGS ARE MUCH ALIKE.
One is always the same in form and stays in the body of animals, while the clouds, the lungs of the sky, are never the same in form. They are sometimes very dense and separated from all others. Such are more furious in display. Then we see the softer clouds which cover all visible space above; they too give us rain but in a more quiet way and are more extended in space; they shade the sun, and form water by uniting oxygen and hydrogen, and supply vegetation and all demands for water. Now we see and know the uses for the clouds or lungs of the sky, and we are led to hunt and locate the water forming clouds of the animal beings. As we behold above us the forming clouds we see great activity, with darkness and attending shadows, without such shadows or darkness no rain can form.
The lung of man, too, is in the shade, and surely like the clouds have much to do with the air which contains both gases, which compose water and other elements of life. With my power of reasoning, if the lungs do not generate water and supply the human system through the secretions to sustain life, and keep the body clean and healthy by the excretories, I am at a loss to know why so much wind is taken into the body just to blow out. One would say we live by the wind, and to cut it off we die. At this point I will ask the question, Where and how do fishes get their wind? If they can live on oxygen and hydrogen when united in the form of water, is not this the strongest conclusion we can come to that the lungs generate water of a purer quality than is found in the running brooks or ocean?
Is it not reasonable to suppose that in the lungs can be found the fountain from which water is conveyed to the lymphatics and other parts of the body, to mix with the blood and keep it in proper condition while in construction and processes of renovation? Then if this be true, have we not established and located the fountain head and supply of the nutrient waters of life? If so are we not justified in going to that fountain for water to extinguish a fire that is consuming the body, which we call fever? This heat never appears until the water supplying the lymphatics is very much exhausted, previous to this exhibition of heat; which the chemist would conclude was the result of the action of phosphorous uniting with oxygen without hydrogen.
We as philosophical machinists, to extinguish this fire by every method of reason, would be forced to go to the lungs, and place them in a condition that they can generate water at once and supply the excretory ducts, which will at the first pulsation of the heart throw water upon the consuming fire, and extinguish it by uniting oxygen with hydrogen, and cover the burning building with water by disabling the power of phosphorous and oxygen from uniting and keeping up the flames of destruction.
THE WISDOM OF NATURE.
For all my life previous to the day I spoke out with my conclusions of the wisdom of nature as a very wise and careful mechanic, I had been told that "God" was wise to a finish,—from my birth until I was thirty-five years old,—when I saw that all work done by that law of power and wisdom was absolutely perfect in all its requirements. In vegetable life no power of human can detect a flaw or even suggest an additional leaf, limb or fruit. I had made a long study of minerology in which I found each stone or mettle was in a division of life that was its own, and no other stone could appear dressed in its garb, from the black silurian to the purely transparent crystal. I saw that a diamond could not be a ruby, neither could it be an oak, a goose nor a goat. With all the teaching which had given God credit for his perfect construction, wisdom and ability in all nature, I reasoned that in parching seasons that the sun's fires were put out, and a feverish earth cooled by the falling dews of the clouds. I asked of my own reason if there was not a cloud of water in the human body that could be caused to drop its dews, put out the fires of fever, and save the forests of life that were being burned every fall season.