Phreaking

“ Time after time that frail, torn scream
After each jerk, the longish interval,
The tortoise eternity,
Age-long, reptilian persistence,
Heart-throb, slow heart-throb, persistent for the next spasm.
I remember, when I was a boy,
I heard the scream of a frog, which was caught with his foot in the mouth of an up-starting snake;
I remember when I first heard bull-frogs break into sound in the spring ”

“ Chemists tell us that most combustible things, both in the animal and vegetable world, have carbon for their basis—so has the skin; and, if it be exposed to the heat, it becomes, like them, spotted or charred. The iron and oxygen in the blood also assist to produce this effect. Thus we have the cause of freckles. Those who, like Richard Cœur de Lion, and Mary [133] Queen of Scots, have red hair (which is caused by a red-colored oil, more strongly impregnated with iron than others) , are most liable to freckles. ”

“ In all these fevers the part inflamed is called a phlegmon, and by its violent actions excites so much pain, that is, so much of the sensorial power of sensation, as to produce more violent actions, and inflammation, throughout the whole system. Whence great heat from the excited capillaries of the skin, large and quick pulsations of the heart, full and hard arteries, with great universal secretions and absorptions. These perpetually continue, though with exacerbations and remissions; which seem to be governed by solar or lunar influence. ”

“ If you fear that any virus has got in where there is any sore, or where the skin is broken, touch it with carbolic acid.
FRACTURES AND DISLOCATIONS. One of the signs of a FRACTURE is crepitus, the sound made by the rubbing of the ends of broken bones together. This sound cannot always be obtained, even when the bone can be moved so that the ends rub each other, and as such motion causes considerable pain the nurse should not seek for it, except as she harkens when the limb is accidentally or necessarily moved. ”

“ Long Prepuce.—Much has been said in recent years about the influence of a long prepuce in the male in producing various reflexes the effects of which may be seen in serious disturbance of even distant organs. The kidneys are sometimes said to be thus reflexly affected, and occasionally the digestion and the bowels—even, sometimes, mental processes are said to be influenced unfavorably by the diffusion of reflexes from the irritation consequent upon this sensitive structure being too long. A whole system of nosology exists in some minds due to an over-long prepuce. ”

“ Free Perspiration.—​Another point must be attended to, in order to secure that the brain be nourished by healthy blood. The blood receives and gets rid of the waste of the tissues, and one of the most important agents by means of which it does this necessary scavenger’s work is the skin. Millions of invisible pores perforate the skin, each the mouth of a minute many-folded tube, and each such pore is employed without a moment’s cessation, while the body is in health, in discharging perspiration—that is, the waste of the tissues—upon the skin. ”

“ When the external skin is the seat of inflammation, and produces sensitive irritated fever, no collection of matter is formed, as when a phlegmon is situated in the cellular membrane beneath the skin; but the cuticle rises as beneath a blister-plaster, and becomes ruptured; and a yellow material oozes out, and becomes inspissated, and lies upon its surface; as is seen in this kind of erysipelas, and in the confluent small-pox; or if the new vessels are reabsorbed the cuticle peels off in scales. ”

“ If, now and again, my puppets or my plot-wires creak a bit noisily,—what then? Creaking, at worst, is a sure indication of movement,—of action,—of incessant progress of sorts. A thing that creaks is not standing still and gathering mildew. It moves. ”

“ The fact that the pain of pricking arises after the sensation of touch, when one operation produces both, is explicable if we suppose that a second set of nerves, viz. those producing the sense differentiation known as pricking or cutting, are brought into action after those of touch, and that they do not appear in pleasurable form under the method of experiment, and, maybe, that they have practically little storage capacity and are therefore little liable to appear in pleasurable phase at all. ”

“ The physician who had been called, after my departure, had found her with high fever and delirium. He mistook the excitement of the brain for its inflammation. O, fatal error! A consultation was called. The second comer was notedly a man who viewed every excitement as caused by “an over-action of the vessels,” and bleeding was its only relief. The nervous system he entirely ignored. From his theory, man was a mere combination of blood, blood-vessels, and biliary secretions, more or less deranged. Calomel, salts, and the lancet were his Hercules. ”

“ Many young girls try every remedy they come across or hear of, and are surprised when they find that none of them are lasting, and if it is a fact, as we are told, that freckles are the result of iron in the blood, then of course nothing can be of permanent good. I have noticed in testing the many recipes I have given in this volume, that an application that succeeds with one person has no effect upon another, therefore one requires to find out which suits her skin and particular complexion, and keep to that only. ”

“ The diagnosis is not difficult, for an inequality presents itself to the fingers of the examiner, and there is crepitus with derangement at the fractured part. When the fractured parts incline inwards there is a violent pungent pain, more severe than that in pleurisy, from the pleura being wounded as with a sharp instrument; there is difficulty of breathing, cough, and often vomiting of blood. The other modes of displacement, then, may be rectified by the fingers, but in that inwards this cannot be done, owing to the difficulty of applying distension. ”

“ For all such facts the reader must consult the treatises on physiology. What concerns us here is the inhibition exerted by different parts of the nerve-centres, when irritated, on the activity of distant parts. The flaccidity of a frog from 'shock,' for a minute or so after his medulla oblongata is cut, is an inhibition from the seat of injury which quickly passes away.
What is known as 'surgical shock ' (unconsciousness, pallor, dilatation of splanchnic blood-vessels, and general syncope and collapse) in the human subject is an inhibition which lasts a longer time. ”

“ It sometimes happens, that in spite of all endeavours to the contrary, the inflammation goes on, and symptoms of a beginning mortification appear. When this is the case, the prepuce must be scarified with a lancet, and, if necessary, divided, in order to prevent a strangulation, and set the imprisoned glans at liberty. ”

“ Great heat is produced from the new chemical combinations arising in the secretion of new fibres, and great pain from the distention of old ones, or from their increased action. The increased quantity of sensation from a topical inflammation or phlegmon is the immediate cause of the febris sensitiva irritata, or inflammatory fever ”

“ If obscured by an anæsthetic or if asleep, provided the impinging on the nerves is not sufficient to waken me, or even if my attention be very much absorbed, I shall not be conscious of the pricking. On the other hand, if I have been pricked before so that my fears are aroused, or if I am worried or weary or ill, then the pain is many hundred times greater than under the opposite circumstances. We go to a dentist one day when we are in a hurry, and with the mind troubled about some matter. ”

“ Standing booted under the open sky on the ground, you catch a frog by the head, spit into its mouth, ask it to carry away the ache, and then let it go. But the ceremony must be performed on a lucky day and at a lucky hour.160 In Cheshire the ailment known as aphtha or thrush, which affects the mouth or throat of infants, is not uncommonly treated in much the same manner. A young frog is held for a few moments with its head inside the mouth of the sufferer, whom it is supposed to relieve by taking the malady to itself. ”

“ The vitreous phlegm being the coldest of all, if it accumulate in the body, and remain free from putrefaction, it occasions the rigor without heat, which is not attended with fever. In those fevers which are kindled by the humours, it is putrefaction for the most part which kindles febrile heat. If it become putrid, and that through its whole substance, which is rarely the case, owing to its great coldness, it occasions quotidian fever. ”

“ REMEDIES. What are the Remedies proper for a Phlegmon?
They are of two sorts, viz. General and Particular; the former having regard to the antecedent cause, and the other to the conjunct. The Phlegmon is cur'd in its antecedent Cause, by Phlebotomy or letting Blood, by good Diet, and sometimes by Purgations, by which means the Plethory, Heat, and Alteration of the Blood is diminished; But Fomentations, Cataplasms and Plaisters facilitate the Cure in the conjunct cause, either by dissolving the Tumour, or bringing it to Suppuration. ”

“ In those morbid cases where several seconds elapse after the sensations of touch and cold are felt before the pricking pain arises, we may surmise that some disturbance has occurred which has delayed the action of the nerves affected by the laceration or cutting or pricking of painful degree. ”

“ So with the prepuce, the luxury and idleness, voluptuousness and consequent feasting incident to its being supplanted in its original functions by the perineal cloth, which left it thenceforth unemployed, led it in the pathway of disease and death. This first innovation in civilization was to the prepuce the beginning of its decay and fall. ”

“ Pressed tightly against the smooth rock, feeling for every crevice, every slightest irregularity of surface, making use of creeping tendril or dead branch, daring death along every inch of the way, these two creepers at last attained the opening to the little gulley, and sank down, faint and trembling, their hands bleeding, their clothing sadly torn by the sharp ledges across which they had pulled their bodies by the sheer strength of extended arms. ”

“ A contracted state of the prepuce, its adherence to the glans, or that condition of it termed phymosis, form impediments to the emission of the semen which can only be removed by an operation; and if that be neglected, the evil continues through life. ”

“ Then followed a struggle no flea can describe—sighs of blissful and ravishing sensations escape his open slobbering lips, he pushes, he bends forward, his eyes turn up, his mouth opens, and, unable to prevent the rapid completion of his lustful pleasures, the strong man gasps out his soul, and with it a torrent of seminal fluid, which thrown well forward squirts into the womb of his own child. ”

“ If the Seeds of the Fever, which are cast out in part from the Blood, by reason of their crude and indigested State, are uncapable of breathing through the Pores of the Skin, but are caught and entangled in the small Strainers which they are unapt to pass ”

“ One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that condition for hours; the other has pained the animal no more than one of us would be pained by tying strings round his fingers, and keeping him in the position of an hydropathic patient. ”

“ The Great Comfrey helps those that spit blood, or make a bloody urine. The root boiled in water or wine, and the decoction drank, helps all inward hurts, bruises, wounds, and ulcer of the lungs, and causes the phlegm that oppresses them to be easily spit forth: It helps the defluction of rheum from the head upon the lungs, the fluxes of blood or humours by the belly, women’s immoderate courses, as well the reds as the whites, and the running of the reins happening by what cause soever. ”

“ She stooped to pick them up, but such a crying came as surely never frogs made before, and so piteously they looked at her that she began to feel there was something strange about these frogs, and she dropped the one she held in her hand.
"But I am stupid," she said, "to take notice of a frog's cry. I would be mad to leave such a good feed here." And again she stooped to pick them up.
Again came their croaking cries intensified. And the cries seemed to frame themselves into the words: "You must not eat us. ”

“ The decapitated frog rubs its skin where it is touched with a drop of muriatic acid in a way which is ordinarily referred to the trained apparatus of his spinal cord, as no brain is left, and the usefulness of the action and its adjustment is very well understood as the result of the connecting paths in the nervous system. ”

“ What can be done by reflex action can only be appreciated by observing an animal from which the brain has been removed. A frog which has been treated in this way—the operation, it should be said, if performed under an anæsthetic can cause no pain, either at the moment or afterwards—will live for weeks—in fact, almost indefinitely—if proper precautions be taken. ”

“ With a frog of good size, low down, and taking part in the pressure of the foot on the ground, contraction will be prevented. On the other hand, an ill-developed frog, one wasted by long-continued and spreading thrush, or one robbed of its normal function by excessive paring in the forge, is a common starting-point of the condition we are considering. ”