Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA)

 - Class of 1945

Page 20 of 176

 

Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) online collection, 1945 Edition, Page 20 of 176
Page 20 of 176



Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) online collection, 1945 Edition, Page 19
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Page 20 text:

Electrical stimulation in the treatment of peri pheral nerve injuries 4 St. Dr. Fischer and Miss Ramse studying the effect of electrical stimulation on various properties of denervated mammalian muscle J-ke z ntY)ottance oj: (J- e eatck ui llskuucal 1 LeJLicine No remedial agent merits the confidence of the physician unless it fulfills the following conditions: (a) ready accessibility, (b) a rationale ascertained by experiments on a physiological basis, (c) facility of dosage, (d) reliable clinical observations. Thus wrote Dr. Simon Baruch in his Epitome of Hydrotherapy published in 1920 shortly before his death. The larger portion of his professional career was devoted to untiring efforts to demonstrate that hydro- therapy fulfills these four conditions. From his earliest writings on, he emphasized the importance of establishing the rationale for this branch of physical therapy. The first quarter of his first book, The Use of Water in Modern Medicine published in 1892, deals exclusively with the physiological changes brought about by the various applications of water, while the clinical :hapters contain a wealth of sound observations accompanied by attempts at a statistical evalua- tion of the results obtained. Simon Baruch ' s well known Text Book of Hydrotherapy, first published in 1898 and translated into French and German, also stressed the importance of an understanding of the basic physiological reaction produced by water and the need for critical evaluation of all clinical observations. Baruch was well aware that if the medical profession failed to grasp the value of hydrotherapy and to study its biological foundation, The quack and semi-quack, who haunts the flanks of the medical army, as the guerilla does that of a nation would pick up these methods and drive the physician from the field. Unfortunately, Simon Baruch ' s advice was too often disregarded. The regrettable result was that the average physician did not realize that sound physical therapy requires, as does sound drug therapy, a thorough knowledge of the basic effects of the various remedial agents used and of the relation between dosage and effect. Because of these omissions, physical therapy became one of the least respected specialties of medicine. As so often happens a vicious cycle developed. Relatively few good physicians were attracted to physical medicine in the last decades. In consequence, our knowledge of the basic process involved in the curative effect of physical agents advanced much less than our physiological and therapeutic knowledge in general. Students often get the mistaken impression that physical therapy is based solely on

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it necessary to supplement defects in the education of its medical officers by the introduction of specialized post-graduate training in physical medicine. The number of patients referred for physical therapy in Army hospitals ranges from 20 to 30 per cent of all admissions. Indeed, it now appears that the physical rehabilitation of psychiatric casualties and the high incidence in the present war of fractures, amputations and peripheral nerve injuries, will be the most serious medical and social problem of its kind the world has ever known. The lives of many men injured in military service are now being saved by the prompt use of whole blood and its substitutes, the sulfonamide drugs and penicillin, and by new methods of rapidly transporting the wounded to med ical centers remote from the field of military operations. Many men with comparable injuries were lost in the last war. Among those saved, then, will be a larger percentage of the seriously disabled in need of prolonged treatment by the procedures utilized in the practice of physical medicine. Thus, this formerly obscure and poorly developed branch of medical practice assumes such critical importance as to make it worthy of serious consideration by all medical students laying plans for their professional future. The trend of the times appears to place more and more directly under medical control all aspects of the process of returning the physically injured and psychically disturbed to a useful civilian life. The term rehabilitation has become one of the medico-sociologic catch phrases of the war epoch. Its potentialities for good have fired the imagination of large numbers of lay and professional people. It now appears that the rehabilitation procedures growing out of current military hospital experience will in all probability become an integral part of postwar civilian health service, with greater emphasis than before on the general restoration of psychosomatic function. Every medical student knows that the successful setting of a fracture does not insure the prompt and spontaneous return of the part to full function. Many lesions which heal in weeks may seriously incapacitate a man for many months because of secondary, often preventable, (Please turn to page 12) These patients are engaged in a checker game as a requirement in the achievement program For arm prosthetic patients. The checkers are graded in size and weight to give practice in grasping various sized objects. Photo courtesy U.S. Army Signal Corps. hirlpool at St. Philip Hospital being used to hasten the recovery of an injured worker



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mediocre empiricism, on personal experience, or even only on the faith of those who believe in physical therapy. Since, as a rule, medical students learn about physical therapy only occasionally, and then superficially in the last two years of their schooling, it is not astonishing that those with an aptitude for research turn away from physical medicine to follow other pathways with scientific traditions well estab- lished by generations of scientists and clinicians. The problems of wartime rehabilitation have opened the eyes of large numbers of physicians and laymen to the needs of an adequate scientific knowledge of the principles of physical therapy. If funds for research can be obtained as readily for problems in physical medicine as for others, clinical work and research in the field will increase and improve. However, progress driven only by economic incentives, un- supported by educational efforts, will be slow. Students and young physicians must be impressed with the fact that the dif- ference between the scientific foundation of physical therapy and that of drug therapy is not so great as it seems at first glance. The advances in our general knowledge in physiology, especially those concerning vascular regulations, lymph formation an d transport, action of the autonomic nervous system, and photodynamic reactions, to name but a few, enable us to visualize, to some extent at least, how various physical therapeutic agents may influence certain body functions and pathological processes. It is important to realize that much of the basic research performed in other fields of medicine has accomplished nothing more than the elaboration of probable mech- anisms for the mode of action of accepted therapeutic measures. It is not a peculiarity restricted to physical medicine that all the mechanisms involved in the curative effects observed are unknown. What physician will refuse to use colchicin for his patients with gout on the grounds that we have not the least idea in what precise manner colchicin acts on the abnormal metabolism responsible for the gout syndrome? Similarly, digitalis and many other effective drugs were used long before we could visualize the mech- anism of their actions. Again and again experience has demonsttated that what we New ultraviolet lamp in use in the M. C. V. Hospital physical therapy department A corner of the Baruch Center ' s basic research laboratory

Suggestions in the Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) collection:

Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) online collection, 1942 Edition, Page 1

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Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) online collection, 1943 Edition, Page 1

1943

Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) online collection, 1944 Edition, Page 1

1944

Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) online collection, 1946 Edition, Page 1

1946

Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) online collection, 1947 Edition, Page 1

1947

Medical College of Virginia - X Ray Yearbook (Richmond, VA) online collection, 1948 Edition, Page 1

1948


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