Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/190

184 effects of sedentary occupations. Its adoption in hospitals and sanitariums would obviate the necessity of a resort to laxative drugs.

Exercise No. 9 is an asthma specific. Continued for thirty minutes every evening it will save the patient hours of struggles with agony of suffocation. Like the balance, stick exercise described in the proceeding chapter, it tends to break the spell of the pulmonary spasm, and the danger of a relapse (though extant, as in all phases of the most incalculable of all organic disorders) is not half as imminent as in cases where relief has been obtained by the use of palliating drugs. The fumes of stramonia (Jimson weed, or thorn apple) induce a deadly nausea which, as it were, by the menace of a more serious peril, overcomes the air-famine and sets the lungs a gasping, while the sufferer's face is moistened by a cold perspiration. Inhaling charcoal fumes would provoke similar symptoms. The grip of the choking fit does relax while the nausea lasts, but as soon as the sickening effects of the poison-fumes subside the patient feels the premonitions of pulmonary trouble and hardly ventures to stir for fear of provoking another strangling fit. The effect of