Hints on the pathology, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of thoracic consumption / by J.C. Hall.

  • Hall, John Charles, 1816-1876.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints on the pathology, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of thoracic consumption / by J.C. Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    on the left side, but there is still bronchophony, and at one point the wavy inspiration may still distinctly be heard. He weighs 11 stones, and can walk five or six miles withont incon- venience ; his cough has entirely left him. This is certainly a most encouraging case, as showing how thoracic consumption is arrested, and how, though to some extent an invalid, a man after such an attack may have a fair share of enjoyment and discharge efficiently the duties of his station. .1 know a gentle- man, now retired from our profession, in whom after thoracic consumption had made considerable progress (and whose case appeared at one time altogether destitulte of hope), the disease was arrested, and he has enjoyed for the last five or six years a tolerable degree of health. Being a man of great intelligence, and thoroughly understanding what is requisite to be done under the circumstances in which he is placed, I have no doubt that much of his comfort has arisen from taking care that the demands upon his lungs have not been greater than them diminished capacity would supply. In other words, he has so regulated the exercise he has taken, that the portion of healthy lung that remains has been equal to the duties it has had to perform. From what I have seen of cases where an attack of tubercle has ended in excavation, I venture confidently to assert that although under treatment very great improvement does take place, there is, unquestionably, a limit beyond which, so far as my experience enables me to judge, recovery does not extend. By this I mean that a person who has once weighed, as in one of the cases just narrated, 12 stones, never does so again : he never gets back the flesh which he has lost. It is true that he may follow his usual calling, but to his convalescence there will be from time to time certain hindrances, and he never becomes again—at least I have never yet seen an instance—