United States or Cuba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The administration in this condition of enormous doses of digitalis by the stomach is inexcusable, and the reason that such patients survive such digitalis poisoning is that the stomach does not absorb during this cardiac prostration.
This prolonged rest or diastole of the heart allows the circulation in the coronary arteries to become normal, and the nutrition and muscle tone of the heart improves. Digitalis also increases the blood pressure, not only by improving the activity of the heart, but also by causing some contraction of the arterioles.
I have just been told that your servant was desired by you not to wait a minute. The wind is unfavorable for the sea. I do not think there is the least probability of my going before the end of next week, if then. You shall hear. Affectionately yours, E.B. BARRETT. I am tolerably well. I have been forced to take digitalis again, which makes me feel weak; but still I am better, I think.
As the term indicates, this method proceeds by finding some sort of agent by which the physiological processes may be started artificially; that is, without the usual normal starting of these processes. For example, the physician who stimulates the heart by giving digitalis pursues this method.
One by one these symptoms struck me; & I became convinced that the moment I had so much desired was about to arrive and that I was dying. I was sitting by my fire, the physician who had attended me ever since my fever had just left me, and I looked over his prescription in which digitalis was the prominent medecine.
Ordinarily we are not aware of the beating of the heart, enormous as is the work it does; but in certain cases this beating becomes distressingly violent, especially on lying down flat or in ascending hills or stairs. The latter cases are the more serious, yet both kinds we have found quite curable. In treatment, fomentation must be avoided, and so must doses of the nerve-damaging drug, digitalis.
As the effects of such substances are a violence to the organs, we should exercise the same caution with regard to their use that we would exercise about any other kind of poisonous food, partridges at certain seasons, for instance. Even where these poisonous kinds of food seem to be useful, we should still regard them with great jealousy. Digitalis lowers the pulse in febrile conditions.
I wondered if I were going to have heart-failure, and I knew grandmother would say, "Digitalis!" When I thought of that I laughed, and Lorraine called out, "Who's there?" She came to the long window. "Why, Peggy, child," said she, "come in." She had me by the hand and led me forward. They got up as I stepped in, Charles Edward and Stillman Dane. Then I knew why I was glad.
Also, if there is kidney insufficiency, or if the digitalis diminishes the output of urine, it generally should be stopped. If the blood pressure is high, and perhaps almost always, even in those who are accustomed to the use of it, tobacco should be stopped. Tea and coffee should always be withheld from such patients.
Digitalis, sarsaparilla, eupatorium, she had chosen, for the health of the body; a fern leaf for grace and beauty; the oak and the elm for peace and the civic virtues; evergreen, pine, and hemlock for the aspiring life of the mind and the eternity of thought; rosemary for remembrance, and pansies for thoughts.
Word Of The Day