On asthma : its pathology and treatment / by Henry Hyde Salter.

  • Salter, Henry Hyde, 1823-1871.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On asthma : its pathology and treatment / by Henry Hyde Salter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    97/396 (page 81)
    ture, keeping himself tliorouglily awake, or smokes ad nauseam, or takes an emetic. Under these circumstances the attack will speedily and quickly pass off. In many cases it subsides soon after breakfast, or towards noon, but the patient is non compos for the rest of the day. In others it lasts the entire day, gradually abating towards evening j the patient has a good night, and wakes well the next morning. In others it gets gradually worse as night comes on, and the second night is worse than the first. In some cases the access and departure of the spasm are alike sudden, in others they are both gradual. There is generally a marked time at which the spasm yields and the patient passes from a state of agony to one of very endurable suffer- ing ; he generally knows when this has taken place and feels that the crisis of the fit is over, and often knows exactly when to expect it, for the attacks are commonly very uniform in this respect. In some cases the spasm remains at an unvarying standard, and the sufferer grinds on all day without respite : much more commonly, however, he expe- riences aggravations and abatements, for half an hour breathing perhaps as if each breath would be his last, then getting an hour or two's comparative ease, then another paroxysm, then another exacerbation, and so on throughout the day. These aggravations are frequently due to some exciting cause—the taking of food, laughing, bodily exertion, yielding to sleep—against which, therefore, as long as his attack lasts, the asthmatic is obliged most scrupulously to guard himself. Nothing is so certain as food to induce these exacerbations, and since asthma in no degree interferes with appetite the enforced starvation to which the patient is reduced becomes an additional source of suffering; fainting with hunger he dares not let a particle of food pass his lips, and as long as his paroxysm continues so long must he starve. I have known several cases in which each attack involved G