Pulmonary consumption, bronchitis, asthma, chronic cough, and various diseases of the lungs, air-passages, throat, and larynx, successfully treated by medicated inhalations / by Alfred Beaumont Maddock ; with notes and additions by Charles Greene.

  • Maddock, Alfred Beaumont.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pulmonary consumption, bronchitis, asthma, chronic cough, and various diseases of the lungs, air-passages, throat, and larynx, successfully treated by medicated inhalations / by Alfred Beaumont Maddock ; with notes and additions by Charles Greene. 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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    CHAPTER II. PATHOLOGY AND SYMPTOMS OF PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. The membrane which lines the windpipe and the bronchial tubes in all their minute ramifications, and which terminates by forming the air-cells, is endued in its whole extent with the power of secret- ing—that is, of separating from the blood certain materials which form a thick viscid matter, well known under the name of mucus. This mucus moistens the parts, and in all natural states just a suf- ficient quantity is secreted for this purpose, and also to make up for what is lost by evaporation, or that moisture which every one knows accompanies the breath on its return from the lungs; but should the lining membrane be injuriously acted on by any cause, such as breathing an acrid vapour, or a sudden change in the tem- perature of the air inspired, the membrane then becomes inflamed, and a greater quantity of blood than is natural is determined to the part, and, in consequence, more mucus is secreted than is ne- cessary ; it therefore collects, and, as the watery parts evaporate, condenses into pellet-shaped masses in the bronchial tubes, in which it has been formed, and a partial obstruction is thus offered to the passage of air into the air-cells supplied from this tube. Notice of this impediment is at once given by the nerves which supply this part, and nature endeavours by a cough,—that is, by a sudden and forcible contraction of the chest,—to expel the air from the cells and tubes behind the obstruction, and thus dislodge the offending matter. This is a plain and simple account of that very common affection called a cough, and will explain to our readers the pathology of coughing. As secreting surfaces separate the materials of mucus from healthy blood, so will they remove any morbid products from vitiated blood; and the air-tubes and air-cells which in health se-