Hyperemia As a Therapeutic Agent

in the deer and the moulting in birds offer the best examples for this. Generation and procreation are accompanied by the most pronounced hyperemia?that of rut and later pregnancy. No reaction to foreign substances of any kind occurs without hyperemia, be that substance a crude foreign body or a minute bacterium not demonstrable even with our most powerful magnifying apparatus, a strong chemical poison or a lifeless part of our own body (e. g., blood effused into the tissues). Therefore, I believe I may assert: There is no lesion which the body tries to and is capable of removing or rendering harmless, that produces anemia; it is always accompanied or surrounded by hyperemia. If we, therefore, accept the reactions of the body as useful efforts of nature, we must admit that hyperemia is the most widespread of all auto-curative agents. The idea that the blood and "juices" heal diseases and that "bad blood and bad juices" are aiding the development and spread of diseases is deeply rooted in the minds of the people. But scientific medicine, too, has formed the conception that the quantity of blood of a part of the body is of the utmost importance for its well-being. I intend to show in the following pages that it has pro- 22 IN ALL IMPORTANT LIFE HYPEREMIA IS PRESENT ceeded one-sidedly. It speaks of improvement of the circulation, removal of obnoxious blood-stasis, improvement in the nutrition of the parts by an increased blood- current and acts ac...