"Holding the Blood"

Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 74

" Holding the Blood"

The theory that fever and inflammation are merely Nature's weapons to fight ma-la-dies is the basis of an interesting new medical • system which is^beiiig applied with results that have astonished the experimenters. 'In. acting on the new theory regarding fever and inflammation, a method first devised by Dr August Bier, a celebrated German surgeon, is used. The method consists in holding the blood in an affected part— the lungs, the brain, or a gangrened finger — long enough to permit the diseased tissue to take up all the nou.risfhm©nt "in the blood. This is done at frequent intervals, and is accomplished by means of bandages and vacuum-producing devices. Tho artificially produced congestion is known ia medicine as "hyperaemia," or congestion. Dr Bier designed h.s system for use in surgical cases, and now Dr A. Sieberfc has extended its usa to so-called medical oases. A girl who was suffering from gangrene (practically local death) of a finger was taken to Dr Siebert. He placed her finger in a glass case, which was made into a vacuum, also binding the arm above the wrist, so as to hold the blood in the hand. Tire hand " puffed" out in the vacuum, permitting a larger flow of. blood, and the bandage above the vrr'at retained the blood in the hand. The bandage was left on only a few minutes at a time, but the hand" was kept in the vacuum. In time the increased quantity of blood produced new tissue, and the finger healed, though gangrene actually had affected the bone. In another cas« a part affected by cancer was removed entirely, "sloughing off" while new, healthytissue, built up by sequent hyperaemia, was formed -behind >t. The patient had been operated on surgically, but the cancer, cured now, had returned. Dr Siebert expects also to use the new method in the treatment of tuberculosis, forcing blood into the lungs by a system of bandages about the body.