Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/553

Rh circulation, such as dyspnea, asthma, vertigo, angina pectoris and prostration, rapidly lessened or disappeared far better than by the use of aconite, iodides and nitrites, although it occasionally transpired that when these last were also used the progress was more satisfactory.

It occurred to me to review the analysis of the various mineral waters, and I was surprised to find how many of them exhibited likewise many of these ingredients, in varying proportions, along with one or other factor to which the virtue of the water was chiefly attributed. Hitherto these factitious items have been regarded as indifferent or to them have been attributed various hypothetic or conjectural virtues. We have been long recognizing that the use of certain of the alkaline waters lessened the acidity of the urine and presumably of the blood, and the laity have been taught, partly by the profession but chiefly by the manufacturing chemists and the public press, that if ever the demon of uric acid can be laid, by the ingestion of enough of lithia salts or of some of the new and wonderful substances the special product of the great laboratories, their imperiled lives can be saved and most ills removed. The reaction against this notion has set in, but the fad remains, and will prevail long among the people, and the nonreading of the profession, that alkalies are helpful in a vast variety of vague states accompanied by the output of the uric acid in the urine common to about one fifth of the community. The real point of effort should be the restoration of the functional activity of the liver, which has to do with the conversion of ammonium cyanate, uric acid and other end products into urea. This is to be accomplished in a number of ways, the basis of which is to bring about bettered circulation in the liver and more complete functional power. For this, as well as to accomplish many other functional betterments, no single measure is comparable to regulated, deep breathing exercises. Complete expulsion is even more necessary than full inspiration. The abdominal muscles can thus be made to press upon the viscera, especially the liver and great organs, aiding largely in vascular interchanges hence secretion and excretion. By this means chiefly, if not alone, bowel action is sometimes regulated, and kidney competence enhanced.

There may be, and it seems that there is, considerable efficacy in the use of natural mineral waters, which exhibit a reasonable proportion of those salts that exert a solvent action on lime salts or other adventitious substances. Drugs, however, serve a temporary purpose and, in such conditions as the discomforts arising in beginning degenerative processes of age, would seem to need an indefinite continuance. The real curative remedy and defensive measure is in aiding oxidation of the tissues by all rational means, special movements and stimulation of the vasomotor mechanism of the great eliminating organs.