The Home Journal

The following is an extract from the second lecture of Dr. Brown-Sequard at Boston:

There are many facts which show that morbid phenomena of respiration can be also stopped by the influence of arrest. Coughing, for instance, can be stopped by pressing on the nerves on the lip in the neighborhood of the nose. A pressure there may prevent a cough when it is beginning. Sneezing may be stopped by the same mechanism. Pressing also in the neighborhood of the ear, may stop coughing. It is also hiccough, but some less so than for sneezing or coughing. Pressing very hard on the top of the mouth inside is also a means of stopping coughing: and I may say that the will has immense power there. There was a French soldier who used to say, whenever he entered the wards of his hospital, "The first patient who coughs here will be deprived of food to-day." It was exceedingly rare that a patient coughed then.

There are many other affections associated with breathing which can be stopped by the same mechanism that stops the heart's action. In spasms of the glottis, which is a terrible thing in children, as you well know, as it sometimes causes death, and also in whooping-cough, it is possible to afford relief by throwing cold water on the face, or by tickling the soles of the feet, which produces laughter, and at the same time goes to the gray matter that is producing the spasm and arrests it almost at once. I would not say that these means are always successful. I would not say that we can always prevent cough by our will; but in many instances those things are possible, and if you remember that in bronchitis and pneumonia, or any other acute affection of the lungs, hacking or coughing greatly increases the trouble at times, you can easily see how important it is for the patient to try to avoid coughing as best he can.