Gymnastics in heart diseases / by Claës J. Enebuske.

  • Enebuske, Claës Julius.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gymnastics in heart diseases / by Claës J. Enebuske. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dining posture the embarrassment of his insufficient heart-action abated, a gymnastic remedy was success¬ fully employed. When you advise your heart patient to go to bed, or to sit up, or stand up, or begin to walk, to walk about more, to begin to walk downstairs and upstairs and so forth, you deal with gymnastic measures from the standpoint of my definition. In recent text-books on medical practice the discussion of the therapy of heart diseases contains in due place also the advice to take regulated exercises, a suggestion again of a gymnastic remedy. This traditional and recognized essential part of the therapy of heart diseases contains, although in a com¬ paratively vague and incomplete form, an outline and suggestion of the essentials of the gymnastic therapy of heart diseases. The reclining posture, the half-re¬ clining, the sitting, the standing postures, a little walking, more of walking, walking up stairs, walking up hills and mountains, and other regulated exer¬ cises : these are somewhat defined postures and move¬ ments, and in the order I have mentioned them they represent an approximate progressive scale of exer¬ cises. They are, therefore, gymnastic from the stand¬ point of my definition of gymnastics. They are de¬ fined with reference to desired effects. When, for instance, the reclining posture is advised, it is not only because the patient is unable to stand or walk, but be¬ cause the reclining posture brings the mechanism of his circulation to act under modified conditions, which make his insufficiency less felt and favor recuperation. The posture exercises a remedial influence. When again, sitting and standing and walking are advised, these exercises are not only marks of improvement gained under preceding conditions, but they help to adapt the mechanism of the circulation to their own more active conditions; they are therefore means of a remedial training. The same may be said of the other exercises mentioned.