Volume 2

Lectures on the principles and practice of physic; delivered at King's College, London / [Thomas Watson].

  • Watson, Thomas, Sir, 1792-1882
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the principles and practice of physic; delivered at King's College, London / [Thomas Watson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lacrymalia become impervious, and the tears flow over the cheek. And with all this there is sometimes shivering or chilliness; and the pulse, especially in the evening, becomes a little more frequent than common. There is slight fever. After the unusual dryness, the membrane begins to secrete a thin serous fluid, having acrid properties; for it reddens and frets the ale nasi and upper lip over which it flows. By degrees, this thin serous fluid becomes thicker, and as it becomes thicker it becomes less irritating also, more viscid, opaque, and yellow: the swelling of the membrane diminishes; it is less raw and sensitive: at length the secretion resumes its natural quality, and is reduced to its natural quantity again; and the tumefaction of the membrane entirely disappears. This is the course of what is popularly called a cold in the head. When the defluxion from the nasal membrane is considerable, systematic writers call the complaint coryza ; when it is attended with much pain and weight about the frontal sinuses, it is named gravedo. It is a variety of catarrh. In catarrh, sometimes one part, and sometimes the whole, of the mucous membrane of the air-passages suffers inflammation. If the disorder go down into the lungs, it is said to be a cold in the chest; or, from one of the most prominent of its symptoms, @ cough: in medical language, bronchitis. It sometimes travels from one part of the membrane to another. Beginning, for example, in the nose, it gradually creeps down into the wind-pipe and lungs. Sometimes the inflam- matory condition passes from the throat into the eustachian tubes, and produces deafness; or down the gullet and to the stomach, causing qualmish or other uneasy sensations, and loss of appetite. And occasionally this order appears to be reversed. There are some persons who will tell you that whenever anything disagrees with their stomachs, whenever dyspepsia is produced by some error in diet, they are sure to have catarrh. Now I have adverted to this cold in the head, or coryza, because the phenomena which are open to our inspection in the schnei- derian membrane take place also, no doubt, in the bronchial. The membrane is first dry, and tumid, and irritable; the uneasy sen- sations of which it is the seat prompt to the action of coughing. The chest feels tight, stuffed, constricted. There is some hoarse- ness, and a sense of roughness and soreness in the wind-pipe; and a dry cough, which seems to arise from some irritation about the glottis. Sometimes, with these symptoms, pains in the limbs, like the pains of rheumatism, occur; the appetite is impaired ; ia patient is thirsty; and a general lassitude is felt all over the ody.