A practical treatise on the principal diseases of the lungs, considered especially in relation to the particular tissues affected, illustrating the different kinds of cough / by G. Hume Weatherhead.

  • Weatherhead, G. Hume (George Hume), 1790?-1853.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the principal diseases of the lungs, considered especially in relation to the particular tissues affected, illustrating the different kinds of cough / by G. Hume Weatherhead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    the fact in demonstration of this is, that in propor- tion to the quantity of blood which passes through the lungs, by so much, in their ordinary state, is the frequency of breathing regulated. When the frequency of breathing does not, or can no longer, keep pace with, and bear proportion to, the volume of blood circulating through the lungs, as happens in running, &c, then the sensa- tion we call breathlessness, and a feeling of engorged fulness, amounting almost to suffocation, comes on.* It is this want of air, as Laennec expresses it, which is one cause of the laborious breathing that accompanies several of the diseases of the air- passages, where there is much thickening or tumefaction of their lining membrane; for then the blood undergoes slowly, and with difficulty, the vital interchange of elements resulting from the presence of the air, thus causing it to tarry in its course, and the accumulation or engorgement which this gives rise to consequently produces dyspnoea. Though the distention of the lungs by inspi- ration, and the contact of the air with their inner surface, cause neither pain nor irritation in any part of their structure in a state of health, it is * On this account it is that the horse has eight pulmonary veins, while man has but four. As an animal of speed, it was essential that there should be no ready breathlessness, and, therefore, as little pulmonary engorgement as possible; and hence the number of veins to empty the lungs of blood.