Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/664

646 inflamed organ are affected by the blister. We do not know whether they are dilated or contracted. It is most likely, however, that they are contracted, the contraction lessening the pressure of blood upon the inflamed tissues, and thus diminishing the pain in somewhat the same way as we relieve the throbbing ia an inflamed finger by holding the hand above the head, or by compressing the brachial artery. This is rendered probable by the experiments of Zülzer, who found that when a blister was applied to the back of a rabbit for a length of time the skin and the muscles immediately below it were red and congested, but the deeper layers of the muscles, the pleura, and even the lung on the same side, were pale and anæmic. There are few inflammations of the internal organs in which blisters to the surface are not serviceable, but much has yet to be done to ascertain the exact points at which they ought to be applied in order to produce their maximum effect. Thus it is said that in sciatica a blister to the heel will sometimes afford relief, while one applied in the neighborhood of the nerve itself has little or no effect.

The effect of poultices is probably different from that of blisters, although ultimately productive of similar relief; for, if we again take the simple instance of a finger inflamed in consequence of a thorn having run into it, we find that we can relieve the pain in two ways, either by putting the hand into cold water or by plunging the finger into a warm poultice. Both of these measures, apparently so dissimilar, will produce a like result in regard to the inflamed point; that is, both will lessen the pressure of blood in the vessels where stasis has already taken place. The cold, applied to the whole of the hand, will cause the arteries leading to the finger to contract, and will thus diminish the supply of blood to the inflamed part, and lessen the pressure in the blocked capillaries. The warm poultice will also lessen the pressure, not by diminishing the flow of blood to the part, but by dilating the vessels around the point of stasis, and affording the blood a ready exit into the veins. In the case of internal organs, the blister applied to the skin probably acts like the cold applied to the finger, while the warm poultice placed upon the surface of the thorax or abdomen affects the deeper lying organs in the same way as it does the superficial ones, the warmth penetrating through the thin thoracic or abdominal parietes. On this account, when we wish to relieve pain in the chest or belly, we ought to make our poultices in a particular way. The common practice of mixing the linseed-meal with hot water, and applying it directly to the skin, is quite wrong, because if we do not wish to burn the patient we must wait until a great portion of the heat has been lost. The proper method is to take a flannel bag (the size of the poultice required), to fill this with the linseed poultice as hot as it can possibly be made, and to put between this and the skin a second piece of flannel, so that there shall be at least two thicknesses of flannel between the skin and the poultice itself. Above the poultice should be