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. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND GENERAL THERAPEUTICAL EFFECTS OF MASSAGE. In setting forth the physiological and general therapeutical effects of massage, it is proper to discuss each class of manipulations separately, to a certain extent. Effleurage quickens the circulation in the blood and lymph vessels, both in the part which is manipulated and in the parts adjacent to it. It is clear to all, that strokings in a centripetal direction, as they proceed over the skin, must exert pressure upon the underlying veins and drive their contents toward the more central parts. That these strokings are made in a direction opposite to that of the arterial stream does not detract in any degree worth mentioning from the effect attributed to them above, for the reason that the position of the arteries is deeper and more protected, and because their walls are so much more resistant. On the contrary, the arterial stream is quickened through the faster outflow from the veins and the diminution of the venous blood-pressure. This pressure becomes negative, immediately after the emptying of the veins and by reason of the elasticity of their walls, so that the blood from the neighboring venous channels is sucked into the veins which have been emptied, naturally with no very great force. Massage, therefore, promotes not only the circulation within the tissues that are operated upon, but also has a direct effect upon the circulation of the peripheral parts which lie next them; this, for example, is particularly the case in the so-called throat-massage, on account of the favoring anatomical relations existing in that case. The venous blood-stream, in the contiguous tissues, on the central side, is quickened likewise, the blood being pressed into them, as it were. In other words, massage, a...