Diseases of the lungs (of a specific not tuberculous nature) : acute bronchitis; infectious pneumonia; gangrene, syphilis, cancer and hydatid of the lungs / by Germain Sée ; translated by E.P. Hurd ; with appendices by Geo. M. Sternberg, Dujardin Beaumetz.

  • Sée, Germain, 1818-1896.
Date:
1885
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the lungs (of a specific not tuberculous nature) : acute bronchitis; infectious pneumonia; gangrene, syphilis, cancer and hydatid of the lungs / by Germain Sée ; translated by E.P. Hurd ; with appendices by Geo. M. Sternberg, Dujardin Beaumetz. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    always involving the alveoli, it was both convenient and proper to consider the bronchites under the head of pulmonary maladies. It is true that simple acute bronchitis is not a microbiotic disease, but the severer forms of bronchitis are—whether occurring primarily, as influenza, which is due to an atmospheric ferment, or secondarily as a sequel of such acute infec- tious diseases as measles, small-pox, or pertussis. It cannot but be a sur- prise to the medical Eip Van Winkle to be informed that acute pneu- monia is dependent on an atmospheric infection, and that under certain circumstances (unlike influenza) it has been propagated by contagion; the recent researches of Friedlander and Talamon go far to show that this common malady is a specific affection due to the localization in one or both lungs of a mi robe whose presence and depredations are the cause of the subsequent constitutional symptoms; in fact these experimenters claim to have discovered the microbe of lung fever, to have cultivated it and tef have reproduced in animals the original disease with its character- istic symptoms and lesions. Some may be disposed to doubt whether cancer be an infectious disease, though it certainly is hereditarily transmissible; analogy, however, would class it by the side of tuberculosis and insist on a similarity of causation. The section devoted to pulmonary cancer seems to me especially valuable. Syphilis is the type of infectious diseases which are almost exclusively human; zealous pathogenists will always continue searching for the mi- crobe of this disease till they find it. The chapter on pulmonary syphilis will be read with interest and profit. Gangrene of the lungs is infectious in so far as it is caused by the microbes of putrefaction; the active agency of septic bacteria in this disease seems proved beyond any reasonable doubt. The chapter on pulmonary gangrene is quite complete, as is the final chapter on Hydatids of the Lung, an affection with which fortunately American physicians will very seldom have occasion to deal. In the portion of the work devoted to Therapeutics, Prof. See labors to make the new views of causation do practical service, and if the old antiphlogistic and contra-stimulant methods of treatment were not already dead past resuscitation, they could no longer be defensible. Whether the therapeutic application to the human infectious diseases of a wider and more accurate acquaintance with the special morbific agents,— supposing it to be finally proved that the materies morbi of all these diseases be a contagium vivnm—shall verify the old adage “ knowledge is power,”