[Concluded from SUPPLEMENT No. 387, page 6179.]
THE INFLUENCE OF EFFECTIVE BREATHING IN DELAYING THE PHYSICAL CHANGES INCIDENT TO THE DECLINE OF LIFE, AND IN THE PREVENTION OF PNEUMONIA, CONSUMPTION, AND DISEASES OF WOMEN.
By DAVID WARK, M.D., 9 East 12th Street, New York.
During the past winter inflammation of the lungs has destroyed the lives of many persons who, although they were in most cases past the meridian of life, yet still apparently enjoyed vigorous health, and, I have little doubt, would still have been alive and well had the preventive means here laid down against the occurrence of the disease from which they perished been effectively practiced at the proper time.
The most important anatomical change occurring during the progress of pneumonia is the solidification of a larger or smaller part of one or both lungs by the deposit in the terminal bronchial tubes and in the air cells of a substance by which the spongy lungs are rendered as solid and heavy as a piece of liver. The access of the respired air to the solidified part being totally prevented, life is inevitably destroyed if a sufficiently large portion of the lungs be invaded.
This deposit succeeds the first or congestive stage, and it occurs with great rapidity; an entire lobe of the lung may be rendered perfectly solid by the exudation from the blood of fully two pounds of solid matter in the short space of twelve hours or even less. The rapidity with which the lungs become solidified amply accounts for the promptly fatal results that often attend attacks of acute pneumonia. If recovery takes place, the foreign matter by which the lung tissue has been solidified is perfectly absorbed and the diseased portion is found to be quite uninjured. The only natural method by which the blood can be freed from the presence of foreign matter is by the oxidation--the burning--of such impure matters; the results being carbonic acid gas that escapes by the lungs and certain materials that are eliminated chiefly by the kidneys. But when these blood impurities exist in the vital fluid in unusually large quantities, or if the respiratory capacity be inadequate, the natural internal crematory operations are a partial failure. But nature will not tolerate the presence of such impurities in the vital fluid; if they cannot be eliminated by natural means they must by unnatural means; therefore such material is very frequently deposited in various parts of the body, the point of deposit being often determined by some local disturbance or irritation.