Cluthes Advice to the Ruptured | Page 4

inherited.
Now the bowels are always pushing or pressing more or less against the abdominal wall-- any one, whether ruptured or not, can plainly feel that pressure when coughing or sneezing; while lifting or other exertion greatly increases the pressure or strain.
When in a healthy or sound condition, the abdominal wall is elastic; and when the bowels push against it, the muscles which form it simply stretch until the strain on them is over.
Just as when you pull at your cheek, the flesh falls back in position the instant you let go.
[Sidenote: Why The Muscles Give Way Under Strain]
But if the muscles of the abdomen are in a weak condition, they can't stand much strain-- can no longer stretch-- any quick movement is often enough to cause them to spread apart, forming an opening through which a part of the bowels pushes out or protrudes.
Now there is only one way to overcome that weakened condition; only one way to get rid of rupture without undergoing the dangers of operation.
As a first essential, proper artificial support must be applied at the point of rupture.
Comfortable mechanical support that can be depended upon to hold the bowels always in place.
Just as a broken bone must be held in place, while healing, by a bandage or plaster cast.
Dr. Birkett, of the famous Guy Hospital of London, and one of the world's most eminent medical and surgical authorities, says this:
[Sidenote: What Dr. Birkett Says]
"The expediency of judiciously pursuing the mechanical treatment of every variety of hernia (rupture) cannot be too strongly urged upon the laity by the profession. In both sexes it should be carefully conducted the moment that the slightest protrusion shows itself; whether the hernia occurs in infancy, youth, middle age or at later periods of life, if properly watched and judiciously supported, it usually gives but little trouble; in many cases it is even cured. But on the contrary, if it be neglected, increase in bulk and, sooner or later, diseased states of the rupture, often leading to the death of the individual, will almost infallibly occur."
And there is only one thing in the world that can give the mechanical support which Dr. Birkett and other famous physicians say is essential.
That is the right kind of truss.
Any system of treatment (except operation) which claims to relieve or cure rupture without the use of a truss is simply a fraud.
[Sidenote: Why You Need a Truss]
The weak muscles at the rupture opening can't possibly get strong without the aid of a truss that will do what the muscles themselves are too weak to do; a truss that will hold the bowels in place.
But trusses which will do that even half the time are mighty scarce.
Thousands of sufferers have tried truss after truss in hopes they would finally get one that would do it; and to this day haven't found such a truss.
All trusses and "appliances" claim to hold you together.
But ordinary trusses-- those with bands or belts or springs around the body, those with leg-straps, those sold by drug-stores and "Hernia Specialists"-- are absolutely wrong in principle, construction and action.
They are like trousers worn without suspenders or belt-- continually slipping-- you've got to keep adjusting and "hitching them up."
The "harness" shifts or pulls the holding pads away from the rupture opening.
Thus your rupture is continually coming out-- Nature never gets the ghost of a chance to start any healing process.
But even if such trusses did hold the rupture in place, that alone could never result in cure; couldn't even result in improvement.
Because that alone does nothing whatever to strengthen the weakened muscles, or to overcome the muscle lifelessness, the conditions which cause rupture.
No man ever made his arm strong by not using it.
And if a truss does nothing more than hold the rupture in place, the muscles at the rupture opening are never used, get no exercise, so they grow constantly weaker instead of stronger.
We have had cases here at the Institute where, for lack of activity, the muscles around the rupture opening had withered almost completely away. And usually, in addition to lack of use, the deadening, benumbing pressure from a wrong truss was partly responsible for that withered or deadened condition of the muscles.
We can do nothing in cases like that. Neither can an operation or anything else. It is entirely too late.
Like a man whose arm has been broken.
While carried in a sling or plaster cast, the arm tends to lose its strength-- loses it through lack of use.
And if, after the bone has knit, the arm is still carried in a sling, never used, its muscles would soon atrophy or become dead, weaken and waste away until useless.
A doctor would insist that the arm be used or exercised as soon as the bone had knit, thus gradually restoring it to strength.
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