A sketch of medical climatology : Pau and its neighbourhood / by H.Duboue .... Tr. from the French by R. de Musgrave Clay.

  • Duboué, Paul Henri, 1834-1889.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A sketch of medical climatology : Pau and its neighbourhood / by H.Duboue .... Tr. from the French by R. de Musgrave Clay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    of which however are often considerably altered by clima- tological influences. In the Paris hospitals, those who have walked them have had frequent opportunities of making this observation, — it is generally mild, and yet, it has a protracted, it not very serious damaging influence on the general system. It is usually accompanied by a more or less intense fever, and the bronchial secretion may become very abundant for days and weeks. Cases ending fatally, even under ordinary climatic] circumstances, are not altogether exceptional; and we all know that under certain hygienic or meteorological influences, for instance after the siege of Paris, bronchitis, although entirely free from any such inter- vening complication as pneumonia or tuberculosis, frequent- ly ends fatally. I appeal, on this subject, to the recollections of all those of my « confreres » who made their observations in the same hospitals as I did myself, and I trust they will not find the above assertions in any way exaggerated. Such a preliminary explanation is by no means unneces- sary, since it enables us better to illustrate how things take place in our region, where acute bronchitis is, in the im- mense majority of cases, limited to the middle-sized bron- chial tubes, and very seldom reaches the minute ramifica- tions of the air-passages. Besides, whatever be the form it takes, it is very rarely attended by the abundant secretion I have just mentioned, and I do not know of a single case in which it ended fatally. Of course, in our climate as well as in many others, pneumonia sometimes exhibits at fiist the symptoms of bronchitis ; but they are very soon superseded by those of real pneumonia, which is no more innocuous here than anywhere else. But such cases cannot, on any account, be classed under the heading of simple bronchitis. I have even a very precise recollectioaof having observed, some three years ago, two cases of capillary bronchitis, sho-