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The Treatment of Diseases of the Nervous System
The Treatment of Diseases of the Nervous System Author:Joseph Collins Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART II. THE GENERAL APPLICATION OF REMEDIAL MEASURES IN THE TREATMENT OF NERVOUS DISEASE. INTRODUCTION. Druhs are ordinarily prescribed in the treatmen... more »t of diseases of the nervous system to obtain a supposed specific effect upon a definite pathological condition. They are in consequence often contrasted with physical measures such as the application of water, electricity, and massage, to which is ascribed only a general effect upon disease. Many drugs, however, to which no precise specific action can be assigned are constantly employed in the treatment of disease of the nervous system. In some instances, drugs are recommended for no other reason than that they have been demonstrated by experience to have a beneficial effect upon the general condition of the patient or to have contributed to the amelioration of symptoms appearing in the course of the disease. The first chapter of Part II. will therefore be devoted to a consideration of the applicability of drugs to diseases of the nervous system in general. Succeeding chapters will deal with hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, massage, exercise and rest, and diet. In a concluding chapter on psychotherapy an estimate of the therapeutic value of suggestion and other mental measures in the treatment of nervous diseases will be attempted. Though the benefit to be derived from the physical measures just mentioned is at the present day scarcely questioned, still they are by no means so generally employed as their usefulness would seem to demand. This is probably due to the fact that their use is imperfectly taught or t-ntirely ignored in medical books and text-books of therapeutics. Such information must be gathered almost entirely from the personal experience of the physician who would avail himself of these measures. This is a p...« less