Spasmodic asthma : a thesis for the M.B. degree of the University of Cambridge / by W.E. Steavenson.

  • Steavenson, W. E. (William Edward), 1850-1891.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Spasmodic asthma : a thesis for the M.B. degree of the University of Cambridge / by W.E. Steavenson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    electrical variations correspond with variations in the barometric pressure. But when watching the effect of the changes of the barometer on my attacks of asthma for several months during last summer, I could not find that they bore any relation the one to the other. It has often been remarked that true asthmatic patients do not seem to be deleteriously influenced by a fog, while a fog causes most intense dyspnoea to those subject to bronchitis and emphysema; in fact, many asthmatic patients are better in a fog, and above all in a London fog. Here again we are told that in foggy weather the electricity of the air is more strongly positive than at other times. Again, the differences of locality which appear most markedly to affect my own case seem to be subject to the same laws. Becquerel, when experi- menting for the purpose of finding out the causes of the atmospheric electricity, found “that in the neigh- bourhood of a river, even at some distance, the land and objects placed on the surface possessed an excess of negative electricity.” It has also been proved that on rising ground the amount of positive electricity increases according to the height. On high ground, some distance from a river, I always experience the greatest immunity, such as in Edinburgh, or where my school was placed at Ipswich ; but in the Thames valley near Chertsey, where I sometimes try to stay in a house situated on the lower Bagshot sand, I am never free from asthma. But in considering the different effect locality has upon different individuals, I think it would be necessary always to bear in mind that there must be some centre