A treatise on pulmonary consumption : comprehending an inquiry into the causes, nature, prevention, and treatment of tuberculosis and scrofulous diseases in general / by James Clark.

  • Clark, James, Sir, 1788-1870.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on pulmonary consumption : comprehending an inquiry into the causes, nature, prevention, and treatment of tuberculosis and scrofulous diseases in general / by James Clark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    appears to depend chiefly on its violence, or the activity of the morbid process; and in the other, on the feeble powers of the constitution, which sinks under the pulmonary disease long before it has reached the degree in which it usually proves fatal. The first variety shows itself in striking characters. All the symptoms of consumption in its ordinary form are present in an unusual degree of severity, and succeed each other with great rapidity. The cough increases from day to day, and the expectoration passes through its various changes in the course of a few weeks; the hectic fever is violent, the morning perspirations are copious, and diarrhoea usually contributes its share in the destruction of the patient, who sinks rapidly in the course of six or eight weeks; dying of what is popularly and expressively termed a' galloping consumption.' M. Andral has given four examples of this form, three of which occurred in young subjects, varying in duration from twenty-one to thirty-five days.* Indeed, young persons are generally the subjects of this variety ; and it frequently occurs soon after acute febrile diseases, as fever, scarlatina, measles, &c. The manner in which these diseases modify consumption I shall have occasion to show when treating of the exciting causes. There are two ways in which this rapid progress of con- sumption may be explained. It often occurs in persons of a constitution so highly tuberculous, as only to require the application of some exciting cause to determine the deposition of tuberculous matter in the lungs. In other cases the short course of the disease is more apparent than real. The tuber- culous disease of the lungs, though latent, has been making silent progress, until, from exposure to cold or violent exertion, an attack of catarrh, of pneumonia, or of hemoptysis is in- duced : after which the usual symptoms show themselves, * Archives Generates de Medecine, vol. ii. p. 205.