On the practical use of inhalations, in diseases of the throat and chest / by John Harwood.

  • Harwood, John, -1854.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the practical use of inhalations, in diseases of the throat and chest / by John Harwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the velum of the palate and the uvula, is immediately exposed to our view, when the teeth are widely separated, and we inspire successively through the mouth, and expire through the nostrils. I may here remark, that the act of smoking totally differs from that of inhalation; as the smoke does not pass into the trachea, in consequence of the then closed state of the valves of the throat; and so admirable is the protection, afforded to the lungs by these means, that although the smoke taken into the mouth, be permitted to traverse the pharynx, and even to return through the nostrils, by the elevation and depression of the velum, yet the perfect valve, formed by the epiglottis, still prevents its entering the trachea.* In consequence of increased attention to the aid of inhalation, in the treatment of pulmonary diseases, in London, some very ingenious instruments have been lately invented for conducting that process; specimens of which were recently shown to me by Sir James Clark, and by Dr. Davies, Physician to the Infirmary for Dis- eases of the Lungs. Some of these, however, by contain- ing two artificial valves, like another I had formerly seen, act independently of the important assistance of the nostrils, in inhalation, and thereby set aside the great * The speedy removal of spasm, from the air passages, in difficult respiration, which I have often seen produced by the smoking of stramonium, is therefore doubtless the effect of sympathy, communi- cated by the numerous connecting branches of the several nerves which are distributed to the parts concerned in breathing; this sym- pathy of action, thus extending remedial impressions from the throat and fauces, to the inferior and ultimate ramifications of the air tubes.