Medicina Gymnastica: or, A treatise concerning the power of exercise, with respect to the animal oeconomy; and the great necessity of it in the cure of several distempersFuller, Francis
Science
Medicina Gymnastica: or, A treatise concerning the power of exercise, with respect to the animal oeconomy; and the great necessity of it in the cure of several distempers
Fuller, Francis
Exercise therapy -- Early works to 1800
The ill Success of our Diuretick Method in this Distemper, is very much
owing to our giving those Medicines in so small a Quantity, and to our
not changing ’em for some of a quite different Nature, when one sort
us’d pertinaciously does not take; that the quantity must be encreas’d,
there needs no better Argument, than what is brought for the use of
Purgers; for if the Blood can dispense with the Particles of a Purgative,
it will certainly bear a great quantity of those which are Diuretick
only. What Wonders has that Golden Remedy of _Pythagoras_ done, the
_Acetum Scylliticum_, when given to a proper quantity? And what may not
be expected from the _Sal Succini_, which may be given to a Dose large
enough to irritate the Fibres of the Stomach, and in some measure supply
the place of a gentle Purger; but when it is come into the Blood it may
prove Cordial as well as inciding? And now I am speaking of augmenting
the Quantity of our Diureticks, I can here affirm a very strange Effect
that follow’d upon an excessive Dose of _Millepedes_ in an odd kind of
a Rheumatick Case, for the Cure of which, several things had been try’d
in Vain, by very good Advice; the _Millepedes_ were given to a quantity
scarce credible, to several Ounces, and gave a Relief in a little time
that exceeded all expectation. This with other instances something of the
like nature, every where to be met with, may convince, us that we ought
to advance the quantity of these Medicines, to which if we apply the Use
of Exercise, the highest Advantages may be expected: For to grant as much
as the favourers of the Purging Method can demand, that by reason of the
foremention’d Ropiness of the _Serum_, the Diureticks and Chalybeates
will but distend the parts, and make the Juices grow Turgid. Is there no
way to remove the Dam, but by shaking all Nature at the same time? Must
we blow up the House to get the Enemy out? To what purpose do we talk
so much of the Animal Oeconomy, if we reduce its Rules to Practice no
more than we do? We are taught the Benefit arising from the Constriction
of the Muscles upon the Vessels; and can there be any Case which does
more apparently call for it than this? When it is hazardous to attempt
by inward Violence to dislodge the Viscous Concretions, certainly it
is high time to do it by Muscular Force. This _Hippocrates_ seems to
be experimentally convinc’d of, by his frequent inculcating the Use of
Exercises in this Distemper, Δεῖ ταλαιπωρέειν _you must labour_, is his
constant Expression, whenever he speaks of the Dropsie; which, whoever
considers the Conciseness that is in all the Writings of that Great Man,
will be apt to imagine that it carries its Weight with it, and implies
the absolute necessity of acting upon the Lentor of the Phlegm, by the
playing of the Muscles. Besides Exercise will help to restore the Tone
of the Parts, which is sometimes spoil’d by too great a Distension, even
so much as to be in a manner benum’d, which _Helmont_ seems to lay much
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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