The American eclectic practice of medicine (Volume 2).

  • Jones, I. G. (Ichabod Gibson), 1807-1857.
Date:
1853-54
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The American eclectic practice of medicine (Volume 2). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    48/884
    exhausted and dies in a state of asphyxia, or possibly a vio- lent fit of epileptic convulsions terminates the scene. More generally, however, an amelioration of the symptoms takes place at some stage of the disease, the cough becomes more loose, the respiration less hurried and oppressed, accompanied with a mucous rale, and thus all the symptoms gradually im- prove until the patient recovers. It also frequently hap- pens that the early successive symptoms of coryza, laryngitis, and croup gradually give way, while the inflammatory action is diffused over the bronchial mucous membrane with the attendant change of symptoms, and in its several stages mu- cous secretion more or less free takes place until the extensive surfaces of the bronchial tubes afford a more ample field for capillary engorgement and thus weaken the phlogistic action, when nature with her wonderful recuperative energies comes to the rescue and relieves the case by an abundant secretion from the mucous surfaces involved. But in some rare cases, the diffusive character of the in- flammation does not stop with the bronchial mucous mem- brane, but passes on to the smaller air passages of the lungs, and perhaps to the parenchymous substance of those organs, and produces a well defined case, with all the general and local phenomena, of pneumonia proper. In this event the succes- sive symptoms of catarrh, croup and bronchial irritation gradually give way, and the case is entirely metamorphosed, so that no suspicion would be had, at this stage, that any other symptoms had existed ; and, indeed, in a practical point of view, it does not matter. Upon examining the fauces, in this form of croup, I have uniformly found appearances of inflammatory action, though generally the fauces present a more pale red appearance than is characteristic of active inflammation. I have in a number of instances witnessed patches of a pseudo-membranous form- ation presenting a whitish appearance, and evidently com- posed of coagulated mucus, or coagulable lymph, or perhaps it was the mere deadened epithelium as we often see it in thrush or nurse's sore mouth, but differing essentially from