On diseases of the lungs and air-passages : their pathology, physical diagnosis, symptoms and treatment / by Henry William Fuller.

  • Fuller, Henry William, 1820-1873.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On diseases of the lungs and air-passages : their pathology, physical diagnosis, symptoms and treatment / by Henry William Fuller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cannot be deprecated too strongly; and socially, everybody is interested in preventing them ; for the offspring of such marriages can scarcely fail to be weakly and scrofulous, and even if they attain to manhood, will only perpetuate disease and swell the list of those who, unequal to the fatigues and duties of life, sink pre- maturely to the grave. There is yet one question which demands consideration, before we enter on the subject of treatment; I mean, as to whether con- sumption is contagious or infectious ? In Italy an impression is very prevalent that the malady is communicable from one person to another; and not only is the consumptive invalid avoided, as if he were plague-stricken, but after his death, his clothes, bedding, and everything he has made use of, are frequently burned or destroyed.* As an example of this feeling I may cite a statement of the celebrated Morgagni, which is contained in one of his letters. He says, phthisicorum cadavera fugi adolescens, fugio etiam senex. Even in our own time and in our own country instances are often cited in proof of its contagious character. A wife, hitherto healthy, and apparently free from phthisical taint, nurses her consumptive husband, and falls a victim to the same form of pulmonary disease; a sister tends her gradually failing phthisical brother, and soon after- wards shows symptoms of decline. The sequence is remarkable; and as it naturally places the two facts before us in the relation of cause and effect, it is apt to excite unnecessary apprehension; for there really is no ground for supposing that, in most instances, they hold that relationship to each other. The sister, probably, inherited the taint in common with her brother and other members of her family; and the wife, if free from an inherited predisposi- tion, was not unlikely to become consumptive, worn out as she must have been by her weary, anxious watching, the sleepless nights, and long exposure to the confined atmosphere, and other depressing influences of the sick room—circumstances beyond all others powerful in fostering or exciting a tendency to phthisis. The marvel rather is, that notwithstanding the strain of long-continued * For a full exposition of the arguments by which the contagiousuess of phthisis is advocated, see a lecture by H. Gucnncau de Mussy, in TUnion Medicale,' No. 138, 1859; also the experiments of M. Villemin detailed in the ' Gazette Hebdoniadaire,' 1865-6.