Diptheria [sic] : its nature, history, causes, prevention, and treatment on hygienic principles : with a resumé of the various theories and practices of the medical profession / by R.T. Trall.

  • Trall, R. T. (Russell Thacher), 1812-1877.
Date:
[1862]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diptheria [sic] : its nature, history, causes, prevention, and treatment on hygienic principles : with a resumé of the various theories and practices of the medical profession / by R.T. Trall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    glands, though ever so little, are swollen. They are usually swollen unequally. When the disease is pre- vailing, Bretonneau warns us, at the least snuffling, on the slightest indication of coryza, to feel behind the angle of the jaw, and below the lobe of the ear, and so down the side of the neck for swollen lymphatic glands. We are then to examine the upper lip. ' In simple coryza the skin is reddened equally under each nostril, while in the Egyptian disease it is only on the side of the glandular swelling. If the swelling exists on both sides, it is unequal. On the side where the swelling is least, the redness of the lip will be least. From the period of this discovery we are certain there is a special affection—in fact, the Egyptian disease.' By ' Egyptian disease,' M. Bretonneau means dip- theria. In this connection, I may better say that this dis- ease may appear on the gums, as it often appears on the tonsils, without extending beyond the parts it first attacks. Such cases belong, in general, to the milder forms of diptheria. Among the rarer seats of diptheritic exudation,! may mention the external ear. This tube has been seen lined by it. M. Bretonneau reports an instance in which the lining membrane of the antrum highmoria- num was fully involved. A poor Jew had died while the physician was making preparations for tracheot- omy. The false membrane was found in all the air passages as far as they could be followed, and also making an adventitious lining of loth maxillary si- nuses, filling both with a turbid serous fluid, in which were floating bands of false membrane, as in a pleu- ritic effusion. I have here a letter from Dr. Whittlesey, physician