Consumption; its early and remediable stages.

  • Smith, Edward, 1818?-1874.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consumption; its early and remediable stages. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    VOMITING. A tendency to vomiting not unfrequently occurs. We do not know that in the instances in which vomiting occurs there are evidences of any especial disorder of the stomach, and hence we do not think that the primary cause of it is associated with indi- gestion. We have already mentioned, that in many cases of early phthisis there are some evidences of dyspepsia—more frequently than is found in an equal number of persons in moderate health—and, therefore, if vomiting occur in any large number of such cases, it will be associated with dyspepsia, but we believe that usually the former is not due to the latter. As a general rule, the vomiting or retching is due to the act of coughing, and is therefore truly pharyngeal. The cough in such cases is commonly irritable, and possibly spasmodic, and the patient continues to cough until he retches. It also not unfrequently occurs after a meal, but even then it is always associated with cough. In such cases the food excites the cough either by its quality, its presence on the pharyngeal mem- brane, or by the distension of the stomach preventing the usual descent of the diaphragm, and in such con-