Practical Hydrotherapy; A Manual for Students and Practitioners (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF WATER EXTERNALLY APPLIED. The skin, anatomically and physiologically, is capable of standing abnormal changes and strains placed upon it. In order to appreciate fully the physiological action of hydrotherapeutic applications, it will be necessary to consider somewhat in detail the action of heat and cold upon the various functions directly resident in the skin itself, as well as effects upon distant organs, tissues and functions, the result of nervous or reflex action. These are brought about through the perturbation of the sensory nerve endings in the skin by thermic and mechanical stimuli, are conveyed to the central and sympathetic nervous systems, impressions that start in actions myriad minute responses within the nervous system itself as well as the body structures and functions. The sensory nerves thus become the hydriatist's medium of excitation. Hydrotherapeutic applications may be used to influence and affect: 1. Temperature. 2. Circulation. 3. Respiration. 4. Metabolism. 5. Nervous system. 6. Muscular system. 7. Blood. In addition to which we must consider: 8. Hydrotherapeutic reaction. 9. Contraindications. Taking a normal or "neutral" line, the temperature of which ranges between 92 and 96 F., temperature effects are produced as we rise above or fall below this level, and it serves as a central or median place from which to classify baths or hydriatic applications. This neutral or normal temperature is so called because it does not disturb or perturbate the sensory nervous system, but shuts out all impressions, and by its negativeness calms the peripheral as well as the central nervous systems. Starting, then, with the neutral or normal line, we base our classification according...