A Text-Book of Practical Therapeutics (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: PART III. REMEDIAL MEASURES OTHER THAN DRUGS- FOODS FOR THE SICK. ACUPUNCTURE. This is a term applied to the insertion of a small pointed instrument into the tissues of any part of the body for the purpose of relieving pain, swelling, or dropsies. When used in painful affections it accomplishes its best results in lumbago and sciatica, particularly in the former. When treating lumbago in this manner the writer takes two darning-needles, places them in boiling water to render them aseptic, inserts them at right angles to the skin to the depth of one to one and a half inches, and allows them to remain in place for several minutes. They are then slowly withdrawn, care being taken to prevent them from breaking off. Often after this treatment the patient can at once move more freely, to his great delight. Ringer has, with his usual clear clinical insight, noted that this treatment is more successful in those who have bilateral pain than in those who have one side affected, and the writer has found this statement invariably true. In sciatica acupuncture is less successful than it is in lumbago, but is always to be tried. The needle should be carried down until it reaches the nerve, and perhaps pierces its sheath, and it must be absolutely aseptic. Bartholow has recommended the use of a hypodermic needle for the simultaneous injection of a few minims of chloroform or morphine. Sometimes the best results are reached from inserting the needle immediately below where the nerve finds exit from the pelvis. In other cases it is asserted that the insertion of a needle on the sound side over a spot corresponding to that which is sore may do good. Acupuncture is useless in acute rheumatism and for the lumbar pain produced by fevers. Sometimes a rhigolene spray may be used to freeze...