Lumbago

“ Once a patient has suffered from lumbago, it is liable to recur, and an attack may be determined by errors of diet, changes of weather, exposure to cold or unwonted exertion. It is met with chiefly in male adults, and is most apt to occur in those who are gouty or are the subjects of oxaluric dyspepsia. ”

“ An attack of lumbago may occur alone, or be associated with rheumatism in other parts of the body. It usually comes on by a seizure, often sudden, of pain in one or both sides of the small of the back, of a severe cutting or stabbing character, greatly aggravated on movement of the body, especially in attempting to rise from the recumbent posture and also in the acts of drawing a deep breath, coughing or sneezing. ”

“ Lumbago is a pain characteristically described as one that comes when the patient tries to lace his boots. Especially when he tries to get up from that position, the pain is intolerable. Pains in the chest are often worse on deep breathing—pleuritic pains, for example. ”

“ In acute inflammations, diseases of the heart, rheumatism, and lumbago, the mumia must be buried, at midnight, with a raven that has been drowned, and placed on a chair by the left side of the patient for one night. ”

“ Miners working where the height of the vein does not permit them to stand up are commonly subject to it. Any one who has to assume, or has the habit of assuming, a stooping posture for long hours may suffer from lumbago. Constrained position predisposes more than hard work. Tailors, though in a sedentary occupation, often suffer from it. ”

“ We believe no inconsiderable portion of the ‘colds,’ attacks of lumbago, and even more formidable results of what are popularly called ‘chills,’ may be traced to the practice of wearing overcoats, which arrest the ordinary process of evaporation, cause the clothing within to be saturated with accumulated perspiration, and are then removed, when rapid cooling takes place. ”

“ In the lumbago there is direful pain about the loins, with difficulty in erecting the trunk; but not, as in the nephritis, accompanied with nausea or vomiting, nor pain of the ureters, testicles, or thighs. In the ischias there is severe fixed pain about the hips, os sacrum, and pubis, and often extending down the thigh and{158} leg along the fascia aponeurotica; with difficulty or incapacity of moving the thigh; and sometimes atrophy of that extremity, or sciatic tabes. Chronic rheumatism may harass months, years, with various degrees of severity and exacerbation, and interludes of ease ”

“ There is one kind of restlessness attending fevers, which consists in a frequent change of posture to relieve the uneasiness of the pressure of one part of the body upon another, when the sensibility of the system, or of some parts of it, is increased by inflammation, as in the lumbago; which may sometimes be distinguished in its early stage by the incessant desire of the patient to turn himself in bed. ”

“ But if cold water falls upon them, or if they have to put their legs in water, they become subject to lumbago, sciatica, to indefinite pains in their limbs, and often to a real rheumatism. The rheumatism is generally subacute, sometimes chronic, and most often localized in a single joint—generally that of the left knee, on which the pick-men and heavers rest in working. ”

“ The pain in the back caused from close association with a shovel from seven o’clock to twelve o’clock and from one o’clock to six even now, over twenty years afterwards, almost makes me break down and give vent to my feelings in a more noticeable manner than my friend Taft when he was informed that he had carried Utah. If you have ever been tortured with lumbago, you have a slight knowledge of what races up and down the back of a weed cutter. When he bends down he can’t get up and when he gets up he can’t 26 get down. ”

“ Rheumatism.―Their general remedy is friction. If very severe about legs or thighs, the doctor gets a good mound prepared of ashes, excavating the ground 18 inches, made solely from bark, which never has any grit, but mere ash. If lumbago, the patient is laid on his stomach, the doctor rubs most unmercifully the hot ashes on the part affected, as a butcher would in salting meat; if in thighs or legs, the patient’s feet are put into the mound of heated ashes, about half way up his legs, where he sits whilst the doctor is rubbing the hot ashes on the parts affected. ”

“ The surface of the timber being first attacked, it proceeds progressively into the wood to the depth of about 11⁄2 inch: the tunnels being cylindrical, perfectly smooth winding holes, about 1⁄16th inch in diameter: it is necessary that the holes should be filled with salt water. The outward crust formed by these attacks then becomes macerated and rotten, and is gradually washed away by the beating of the sea. The limnoria does not work by means of any tool or instrument like the teredo, but is supposed to possess some species of dissolvent liquor, furnished by the juices of the animal itself. ”

“ In this case the symptoms were severe.
The proper habitat of the lumbricus is the upper and middle part of the small intestine. From this situation it often wanders into the stomach, and frequently gains access to the outer world, not only by the natural passages of the mouth, nostrils, and anus, but also, occasionally, in a more direct way, by perforating the intestinal and abdominal walls. Many cases are on record where lumbrici have passed into the abdominal cavity. In other instances they have lodged themselves within the abdominal viscera and pulmonary organs. ”

“ When they find their way into the parietes of the abdomen and adjacent parts, they usually give rise to the formation of abscesses requiring surgical interference.
As regards the symptoms produced by lumbrici, these vary according to the situation they happen to occupy. The symptoms are also modified by age and temperament. In the stomach and intestines they give rise to colic and shooting pains about the abdomen, followed generally by dyspepsia, nasal itching, nausea, vomiting, and even diarrhœa. Occasionally death supervenes suddenly. ”

“ In travelling thro’ the swamps it is very troublesome, the mules being knee deep, in the dry season, in a stiff blueish mud, often times nearly sticking fast, and the boughs of the logwood trees so low, as to oblige you to lay flat on the mules shoulders, whilst the animal is all that time plunging in endeavouring to extricate himself from the mire. ”

“ We may first consider the agent apparently so insignificant that has done so much to transform and clothe the surface of the earth. Lumbricus is the name of the best-known genus, of which the species have not been accurately distinguished and numbered; but only a part of them bring up earth in the form of castings, and are engaged in making tillable soil. They appear to be found wherever there is moist earth containing vegetable matter, but seem to abound most where the ground is loose and well charged with humus. Dryness is unfavorable and even fatal to them ”

“ I was racing ahead with mounting eagerness, and had come within a hundred yards or so of the crystal—whose position on a sort of raised place in the omnipresent slime seemed very odd—when a sudden, overpowering force struck my chest and the knuckles of my clenched fists and knocked me over backward into the mud. The splash of my fall was terrific, nor did the softness of the ground and the presence of some slimy weeds and creepers save my head from a bewildering jarring. ”

“ In this quarter-acre mud omelet the beating and the cooking went on together. A score of barelegged men and grown boys waded thigh-deep in the mess, driving their mules (blindfolded, poor beasts, to protect their eyes) , and holding down the drag-boards, to mix the mercury and its prey.
It was close to noon. In five minutes the wading mules would be done with their exhausting day’s work of six hours. Alberto walked down toward the well-tower beside the patio, and something drew his eyes to [262] an overgrown lad slouching behind one white mule at the edge of the mud. ”

“ Redwood lumber has one singular property—it shrinks endwise, so that where it is used for weather-boarding a house, one is apt to see the butts shrunk apart. I am told that across the grain it does not shrink perceptibly.
Accidents are frequent in a logging camp, and good surgeons are in demand in all the saw-mill ports, for there is much more occasion for surgery than for physic. Men are cut with axes, jammed by logs, and otherwise hurt, one of the most serious dangers arising from the fall of limbs torn from standing trees by a falling one. ”

“ Sometimes they scorch them off their bodies by means of a lighted stick—a kind office which Yamba performed for me. The blacks had very few real cures for ailments, and such as they had were distinctly curious. One cure for rheumatism was to roll in the black, odourless mud at the edge of a lagoon, and then bask in the blazing sun until the mud became quite caked upon the person.
The question may be asked whether I ever tried to tell my cannibals about the outside world. ”

“ In places these birds seem to have fled the sea, and are found hovering over the fields in search of food: they should not be shot, as they serve to keep down the earth-worms, and here the lumbricus is a pest, as in the Færoe Islands. ”

“ We sank ankle deep at every step, and logs we thought solid broke under us. Our progress was a steady succession of prying and pulling each other to the surface. Our clothing was wringing wet, and the exposed parts of our bodies lumpy with bites and stings. My husband found the tree, cleared the opening to the great prostrate log, traversed its unspeakable odours for nearly forty feet to its farthest recess, and brought the baby and egg to the light in his leaf-lined hat.
“We could endure the location only by dipping napkins in deodorant and binding them over our mouths and nostrils. ”

“ By carefully removing all such things you will remove one of the greatest causes of accidents in the wilderness, for as slight a thing as a little twig can deflect, that is, turn, the blade of your axe from its course and cause the loss of a toe, a foot, or even a leg. This is the reason that swamping is the most dangerous part of the lumberman's work. ”

“ Lying flat and motionless upon the river bank, or floating like a log upon the water, the mugger escapes the notice of his victim. She stoops to fill her pot. The grey log becomes animated with hideous life. There is a sudden silent rush. The enormous jaws close with a snap upon the tender flesh of a limb, and before she can utter a shriek for assistance she is drawn under water and held there until her struggles cease. Then she is hidden away in the reptile's larder. ”

“ The timber, which is in a state of decomposition by an intestinal decay, is little affected by the application of air, as this cannot penetrate the surrounding spongeous rottenness which generally forms the exterior of such timber, and protects the action which the humid particles have acquired in the exterior: as the extent and progress of the disease is therefore necessarily concealed, it is difficult to ascertain correctly the effect produced by the admission [28] of dry air. ”

“ After a long and weary climb they reached the brow of the rock hills and were able to look down into the "dip" or valley which lay between them and the mountain. The center of the depression, which was three or four miles across, appeared to be quite free from rocks except in a few places where one cropped up in the form of a hummock. Elsewhere the surface seemed smooth and moist, for it was covered with an oozy, stagnant slime which was decidedly repulsive in appearance. ”

“ When wood, or woody fibre, is exposed to the joint action of air and moisture, it suffers eremacausis or decay, and crumbles down into a dark-brown or black powder commonly called ‘mould,’ and to which chemists have given the name of ‘humus.’ In this state it exists in fertile soils, in which it is derived from the decay of plants. ”

“ Very few cargoes of timber in the log arrive from Canada in which in one part or other of nearly every log you will not see a beginning of the vegetation of the rot. Sometimes it will show itself only by a few reddish, discoloured spots, which, when scratched by the finger nail to the extent of each spot, it will be seen that the texture of the timber to some little depth is destroyed, and will be reduced to powder; and on these spots a white fibre may generally be seen growing. ”

“ The immersion of logs in water also improves the quality of the lumber, as the action of the water upon the sap prevents to some degree the tendency to decay, and also facilitates the seasoning of the manufactured product. If the log is left in the water until it becomes water-logged, it will sink, and while it is not injured for many purposes, the wood loses some of the strength which it is supposed to have. In many localities, the salvage of sunken logs has become an industry. ”

“ Everywhere fat banks of black mud, nourishing everlasting mangroves, the obscene slime here piled up in great rotting masses, there smooth in beds, from which bubbles of impure air would come bursting to the surface, and sending up hideous smells of putrefaction. ”

“ Great logs cross our track, and we dare not look aloft, for fear of seeing increased danger. A creeper runs up the trunk of a large tree, and out on a limb, descends to another large tree, and turns itself round the butt as if done by hand; then it wound its way up to perform the same effort again, while the branches or roots were all pulling like so many braces, until the limb was broken from the tree. As it drops to the ground, there is a thick moss ready to grasp it, and the log is soon covered out of sight and rots. ”