ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION IN THE TREATMENT OF EDEMA OF THE LUNGS

Abstract

On three separate occasions, in 1906, 1907 and 1908, while demonstrating the effects of extreme peripheral resistance on the heart and pulmonary circulation, I have noticed a definite result of artificial respiration when administered to an animal apparently dying from acute pulmonary edema. The physical causes of the benefit apparently derived from this procedure seem to agree so well with facts already accepted in physiology, and the possibility of application of the method in certain kinds of clinical cases seems so reasonable, that I offer this communication in the hope that practical tests may, before long, be sufficiently conclusive to establish its value therapeutically, or to relegate it to the mass of theories that have failed. It will save time if I call attention to a few points regarding the effect of respiration on the circulation. The respiratory fluctuations in blood pressure which any one can appreciate in the radial