BY EDWARD MACKEY, M.B. LOND. ETC.
Joint Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in Queen’s College, Birmingham.
Our ordinary medicinal agents are substances from the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms: the one here to be treated of is of that class of remedies which includes the great elements or forces of nature: such are water, in all the varied forms of bath; electricity, in its different developments; air, in all its modifications of pressure or composition.
It is unfortunate that the application of these mighty remedies seems liable to degenerate into charlatanism: partly perhaps because they have the power—wrongfully claimed for quack medicines—of doing good in many apparently different forms of disease; partly because their use must at present be limited to the few, and does not admit of ready introduction into the practice of the many.
Nevertheless, the truthful study of these agents offers scope for the highest science, and promises therapeutical results of the highest value. The following cases are offered as data for judging of the value of one of them. I do not propose to treat here of the chemistry of oxygen,[[9]] nor of its physiological effects, nor even of the objections which have been urged against its use—but simply to state facts which have come under my own observation.
Case I. Emphysema pulmonum (hereditary).—A lady of 55 had been for many years the subject of constant dyspnœa, increased on all movement, and often amounting to a sense of suffocation. A physical examination revealed sibilant râles with prolonged expiration heard all over the chest, which was of large capacity and more than normally resonant on percussion; the heart’s action was weak and the circulation embarrassed, as evidenced by œdema of the face and extremities.
She was subject to attacks of bronchitis occasionally, but, at the time of treatment, the general health was in fair condition; the prominent complaint was the difficulty of breathing.
On July 5, 1868, she inhaled a mixture of 3 pints of oxygen with 30 of air: the results were favourable. Within a few days the dose was doubled, 6 pints to 60: soon the proportion of 8 to 60 was used: and later, 12 to 60, and with this dose we seemed to obtain such good effects that I did not think it necessary to increase it. The inhalations were taken at intervals of three or four days for a space of six weeks; after each one, the lady experienced marked relief, which she expressed as being able to take a deep breath and get sufficient air—a feeling not known for years; as being able to move with comparative ease, feeling buoyant, and more like healthy persons should feel, than she ever remembered.
The only definite effect upon secretion was a more copious and facile expectoration, always produced, and lasting for a day or two; the effect upon the circulation was not marked at the time, but some palpitation occurred, generally in the nights which followed the taking of the larger doses; no other unpleasant symptoms whatever.
In attacks of exaggerated dyspnœa, as they occur sometimes in the emphysematous, and in those peculiar, nervous, irritable states apt to be induced by mental causes in the subjects of weak hearts, I have known her come into my consulting-room, inhale for half an hour, and express herself cheerful and composed. Nor was this the effect of fancy; for, at first, the lady had a prejudice against the plan; now she esteems it highly, nor has she ever found relief at all comparable to this, from the many medicines prescribed at various times by various practitioners.