I love Google Books. Just when you think you've read it all, out pops a little gem. Here's a letter to the editor from the Boston medical and surgical journal, Volume 150.
Enjoy ;) Loran THE GRAPHOPHONE IN THERAPEUTICS. March, 1904. Мн. Editor: In Japan during the summer of 1899, a friend of mine and I hired a small island situate in the bay of Sagami, about a dozen miles south of Kamakura and a hundred and fifty yards from the mainland, upon which was a small fishing village called Sajima. The island was of about two and a half acres in extent, sacred to Teujin, the god of caligraphy, and therefore known as Teujinshima. Upon it was a single house large enough for us and our entourage, together with a shrine devoted to the memory and worship of Teujin. The whole outfit was the property of the Imperial household and came into our temporary possession in a very complicated, roundabout and Japanese fashion, the details of which are too numerous to mention. A common friend of ours came to visit us on the island. He had just returned from Formosa and was broken down from a combination of dysentery, malarial fever and rheumatism which had confined him to hospital for six months. He had been very ill and came to us in hopes that the quiet and isolation of our insular paradise might benefit him. He did not improve, but gradually grew feebler and finally was obliged to take to his bed, as we say, which in Japan means that he did not rise from the floor. With this increasing weakness there developed a constipation upon which neither Cockles pills nor Hunyadi Janos water had any effect. After a week's delay in having a movement of the bowels, my friend and I held what is known in the practice of medicine as a consultation. We decided that the case demanded the administration of an enema. We commanded and carefully supervised the concoction of an injection composed of hot water, glycerine and soapsuds, a pailful. After the injection fluid had been compounded and pronounced good, we made the discovery that although we had plenty of ammunition we had no gun. There was no syringe on the island, not even a Royal P., and none nearer than Tokyo, a distance of some sixty miles. We had a small bamboo which we fashioned into an excellent anal pipe but nothing more. It was suggested that we each blow successive mouthfuls of the injection into the rectum. This idea was rejected as being more likely to produce nausea in us than defecation on the part of the patient. There was a graphophone in the house with which we used to amuse the Japanese kids who swam over every day from the mainlaind to visit us. We were both struct with the fact that the india-rubber tubes of this machine which serve to conduct its vociferations to the ear would also convey fluid. With the help of bamboo, twine and surgical adhesive plaster we spliced the tubes together and attaching the aforesaid bamboo nozzle to one end and the tin trumpet of the graphophone to the other we had an injection apparatus of novel construction but of rare efficacy as its use proved. As the crow flies the distance between the trumpet and the nozzle was a matter of about four feet. The intricate tortuosity of the tubes, however, rendered the distance traversed by the injection one of some yards. The practical results of the use of this acoustic enema were two-fold. Upon the patient the effect was all that could be desired. Upon the graphophone, however, the effect was prejudicial in the extreme. The sounds which issued from it after its prostitution were so fecal and unfit for ears polite that we were obliged to destroy the instrument. I venture to say that this is the first and probably the only instance of the application of the graphophone as an aid to therapeutics. _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.oldcrank.org
