Personal hygiene and physical training for womenGalbraith, Anna M. (Anna Mary)
Science
Personal hygiene and physical training for women
Galbraith, Anna M. (Anna Mary)
Physical education and training; Women -- Health and hygiene
=The Cure of Chronic Bronchitis by Deep-breathing Exercises.=—The
upper part of the body must be nude and the exercises taken before
a mirror, so that the woman can watch the movements of the chest
and abdomen, see that all the hollows of the chest are filled out
during forced inspiration, and that the muscles of the abdomen are
properly retracted. For the average woman this last will be the
most difficult; in beginning these exercises she will find that it
will require all her concentrated energy and will power to cause a
retraction of these disused muscles.
Patients with chronic bronchitis do not have the ability to perform
forced respiration properly. The respirations are too superficial,
and the respiratory movements are not properly performed.
As respiration is ordinarily performed, the partial expansion of
the upper part of the chest is accompanied by a contraction of the
abdominal muscles, whereby the diaphragm is forced upward, with
the result that the lower part of the lungs remains very slightly
expanded, whereby the circulation as well as the removal of mucus is
imperfectly performed. This lack of forced respiration is a frequent
cause of acute bronchitis running into a chronic form.
In chronic bronchitis it is especially in the lower part of the lungs
that stagnation of the secretions takes place, and they can only be
dislodged from the mucous membrane by forced abdominal expiration
and the ascent of the diaphragm. This causes a cough which expels
the mucus, and forcible abdominal expiration and cough are the only
means of drainage of the lower and deep-seated parts of the lungs.
Further, in forced respiration the muscle tissue of the bronchial
tubes contracts, which certainly does not take place in ordinary
respiration, but, on the contrary, this tissue atrophies.
Other beneficial results from forced respiration are increased
oxygenation, improved nutrition, changes of a mechanical nature,
ventilation, and disinfection of the lungs, massage of the lungs and
pleura, and drainage.
No other method of treatment is so successful in the cure of chronic
bronchitis not dependent on disease of the nose and throat. In from
two to six weeks of treatment, in which there is a profuse discharge
of mucus, it will be found that the bronchial tubes have cleared up,
provided that the patient is supplied with an abundant supply of
fresh air day and night. Methodically practised, deep breathing is
not only the surest cure, but also the safest stimulating expectorant.
=Relation of Colds and Influenza to Pneumonia and Tuberculosis and
their Prevention.=—We have already seen that bacilli are not only
the cause of acute infections, but also of chronic bronchitis, and
that this was especially true of the bacillus of influenza and the
pneumococcus of pneumonia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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