2d. When the function of an organ is permanently impaired or destroyed by over-exertion, the nutrition of the part is rendered insufficient, or is entirely arrested; and then the absorbents remove it wholly or partially, as they do every thing that is no longer useful. Thus, in palsied patients, a few years after the attack, we often find scarce any trace of the palsied muscles remaining; they are reduced almost to simple cellular tissue. The condition of the calf of the leg, in a person having a club-foot, is a familiar proof of this.
460. The blood may be made impure, by the chyle being deficient in quantity or defective in quality. This state of 207 the chyle may be produced by the food being improper in quantity or quality, or by its being taken in an improper manner, at an improper time, and when the system is not prepared for it. The remedy for impure blood produced in any of these ways is to correct the injudicious method of using food. (See Chapters [XV.] and [XVI.])
459. How does impure blood affect the brain? What is the effect when any organ is exerted beyond its powers? What is the effect when an organ is permanently impaired? 460. How may the blood become impure?
461. The blood may also be rendered impure, by not supplying it with oxygen in the lungs, and by the carbon not being eliminated from the system through this channel. The remedy for “impurities of the blood,” produced in this manner, would be, to carefully reduce to practice the directions in the chapters on the hygiene of the respiratory organs, relative to the free movements of the ribs and diaphragm, and the proper ventilation of rooms.
462. A retention of the waste products of the skin produces impure blood. When the vessels of the skin, by which the waste, useless material is eliminated from the system, have become inactive by improper and inadequate clothing, or by a want of cleanliness, the dead, injurious atoms of matter are retained in the circulatory vessels. The only successful method of purifying the blood and restoring health when this condition exists, is to observe the directions given relative to clothing and bathing. (See Chapters [XXXIII.] and [XXXIV.])
Observation. If the blood has become “impure,” or “loaded with humors,” (an idea generally prevalent,) it is not and cannot be “purified” by taking patent pills, powders, drops, &c. But, on the contrary, by observing the suggestions in the preceding paragraphs, the blood can be freed of its impurities, and, what is of greater importance, such “injurious humors” will be prevented.
461. Mention another means by which the blood may be made impure. How remedied? 462. What is the effect of want of cleanliness upon the blood? What is said respecting “humors” in the blood?
Fig. 88.