TREATMENT OF FAINTING PERSONS.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 65, 31 January 1883, Page 3

TREATMENT OF FAINTING PERSONS.

♦ It is surprising how everybody rushes at a fainting person, and strives to raise him up, and especially to keop his head erect. There must be an instinctive apprehension that if a person seized with a fainting or other fit falls into a recumbent position d atb is more imminent. I m-st^have driven a mile to day while a lady fainting was held upright. I found found her pulseless, white, and apparently dying, and -I believe that if I had* delayed ton minutes longer she would really have died. I Taid her head down on a lower Tevel than her body, and immediately colour returned to her li & and cheels and -he becam • conscious. To the excited group ol friends, I -said — Always reinemt'er this, fact, namely, fainting is caused by want ol Llood in- the brain,; the heart ceases to act with sufficient force to send the usual amount of blood to the brain. Restore the blood to thebrain and instantly the i person recovers. Now,. though the blood is propelled to all parts of the body b\ the action of the heart, -yet it is still- under 'the influence of thedaws of gravitation. Inthe erect ; position the blooa ascends to the head against gravitation, 1 compared with the recumbent position, the heart's pulsation -being equal. If then, you place a person sitting whose heart 'has nearly ceased to beat, his brain will fail to receive blood-; while if you lay him down, -with the head lower than the heart, blood will run inio the brain by the mere force of gravity, and, in fainting, in sufficient quantity to restore cansciousness. Indeed, nature leaches us how to man age the fainting persons, for they always dull, and frequently ure at once resorted by the recumbent position into which they are thrown. — Medical Journal.