Illustrations of pulmonary consumption : its anatomical characters, causes, symptoms and treatment. To which are added, some remarks on the climate of the United States, the West Indies, &c.

  • Morton, Samuel George, 1799-1851.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrations of pulmonary consumption : its anatomical characters, causes, symptoms and treatment. To which are added, some remarks on the climate of the United States, the West Indies, &c. 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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    twelve years dying of consumption; and another indivi- dual was twenty. They had expectoration and hectic fever, coming and going, during twelve and twenty years; but they died before the days of auscultation, and there- fore, the exact condition of the lungs at different periods during the progress of their disease was not known. I know a man now living, who occasionally spits blood and and pus, and who has occasionally spit blood and pus dur- ing the last twenty years: and Dr. Latham, adds that an abscess had existed in this patient's chest for four years antecedent to the publication of the case.* The duration of phthisis is greatly modified by the pe- culiar functions of the female constitution. During the period of pregnancy, the morbid action is suspended in the 'lungs, while all the resources of nature are devoted to the uterine system.t Lactation produces in degree the same effect; and it is thus that child-bearing women, al- though decidedly consumptive, enjoy a state of compara- tive health for many years: but the disease is only latent, and prone to recur with fatal violence whenever this * Lectures on subjects connected with Clinical Medicine, 1836. f On this subject, however, as on most others, there have been two opinions; take, for example, the following observation from Demalet: L'experience de tous les jours nous apprend que les femmes phthisiques qui divennent encein- tes parviennent tres rarement a terme; et leurs fausses-couches comme leurs heureuses delivrances accelerent le progres de leurs malheurs. De la Ph.th.isie Pulm. p. 127. These remarks however, can scarcely be applied even to women who be- come pregnant in the advanced or purulent stage of consumption: I grant that in such subjects abortion is apt to follow; and even after delivery at the full period, the disease sometimes resumes its sway with destructive violence. Yet even in these cases life is mostly prolonged; for if pregnancy had not su- pervened, the chances are that the disease would have destroyed the patient in half the time allotted to utero-gestation.