The natural history and relations of pneumonia : a clinical study / by Octavius Sturges.

  • Sturges, Octavius, 1833-1894.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The natural history and relations of pneumonia : a clinical study / by Octavius Sturges. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    as yet how much, upon the skill and discernment of the physician. The early history of pneumonia is very obscure. Ac- j^^'^^^Pf^j;;^ counts given by ancient writers are not, in fact, sufficiently of the an- cients precise to make it certain that successive authors are de- scribing the same thing. All that can be said is that a con- dition which, after the nomenclature of Hippocrates, went by the name ofperipneiimoma occupies a conspicuous place amongst the maladies of old. It is clear that the ancient physicians failed to distinguish between pneumonia and acute pleurisy. Hippocrates, obviously confusing the two, describes the latter as a disease of rapid fatality, exhibiting variously coloured sputa. Even our own Sydenham speaks con- - . 1 -1 n founded of the two affections as formmg one malady, while Luilen, with writing only a century ago, comprehends under the title P'^^y- pneumonia the whole of the inflammations affecting either the viscera of the thorax or the membrane lining the internal surface of that cavity, ' Neither do our diagnostics,' says he, ' serve to ascertain exactly the seat of the disease, nor does the difference in the seat exhibit any considerable variation in the state of the symptoms, or lead to any diffe- rence in the method of treatment.' As lately, indeed, as 1792,^ Jean P. Frank, in contradiction of some indistinct affirmations of Valsalva and Morgagni, maintained that pleurisy and pneumonia must be studied under the common name of pleuro-pneumonia. While thus loosely described, it was yet found necessary Early re- at an early period to distinguish the actual disease from its of pe'ri-° supposed counterfeits. ' True,' ' acute,' ' legitimate,' on the iJoth^^ one hand : ' spurious,' ' bastard,' ' illegitimate,' ' false,' on ' In the works of Iluxham and Hoffman, some years earlier, the term 'pneumonic fever' is adopted, indicating, as Grisolle supposes, the belief of those authors that this special fever, rather than the local condition accompanying it, is the primaiy matter, B 2