A dictionary of domestic medicine and household surgery / by Spencer Thomson.

  • Thomson Spencer, -1886.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dictionary of domestic medicine and household surgery / by Spencer Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    62/736 (page 42)
    ficiont menstruation, the aloes and assafcetida mil is a most excellent combination, and may 06 given, throe grains, twice or three times a day. The, to most people, disgusting smoll of assafcetida, is a groat obstacle to its employ- ment, and yet in some countries it is used as a condiment as we use onion. Eofer to—Enevia. ASSIMILATION, the first process of nutrition in animals, by which the nutrient portion of the food is rendered fit for absorption by^ the veins and lacteal vessels, which convey it into the general current of the circulation. Refer to—Digestion. ASTHMA is an affection of the chest, characterised by distressing inability of the person sulfering from it, to inspire sufficient air to fill the lungs. The term, although applied by medical men to a defined disease, is used popularly to denote any difficulty of breathing, from whatever cause occurring, whether from disease of the heart, or any of the varied affections of the lungs. Asthma, although a nervous or spasmodic afiection, is very frequently connected with actual changes in the lungs themselves. Asthmatic fits, or par- oxysms, come on at irregular intervals; for several days, or rather nights, successively the patient is attacked, and a considerable time may then elapse before he again suffers; not that a regular asthmatic is in the interval entirely free from uneasiness, for there is generally some slight oppression of the breathing, liable to be aggravated by slight causes: changes in the weather, peculiarity of situation, errors in diet, anxiety, fatigue, mental excitement, may any of them induce a paroxysm of asthma in the predisposed. The attack itself is premised by feelings of indigestion and flatulence, frontal headache, chilliness, languor, and drowsiness; after having experienced these sensations during the day, the asthmatic individual is probably awakened horn his first sleep by a distress- ing sensation of consti'iction of the chest, he is forced to sit up in bed, labouring for breath, or it may be to seek an open window; the distressed state of the breathing, if not relieved by remedies, continues for some hours, and at last gradually subsides; the character- istic wheezing becomes less, the cough, almost impossible before, is now brought out, and sleep, never more welcome, comes on. The latter stage of the paroxysm of asthma is generally accompanied with expectoration of mucus, sometimes it is not, and upon this a distinction into dry and humid asthma is founded. Confirmed asthmatics have a dis- tressed cast of countenance, and acquire a peculiar rounding or elevation of the shoulders, perfectly characteristic. Asthma may occur at any period of life, but is more general about the middle; and men are more commonly the subjects of it than women. The disease in it- self though most disti-essing, is not dangerous, further than as it tends to lay the foundation 42 of other affections of the lungs or of the. heart. No one can witness a paroxysm of asthma without distressing anxiety to relieve the suffering individual, and not without alarm, if it is the first time of seeing the attack. The patient seems as if he must die for want of air in the lungs, but death rarely, if ever, occurs. In a disease of so long standing, and of so peculiar a character, as asthma, those who are the subjects of it generally have their own remedy, to which they habitually have re- course. The remedies are very various, and indeed happily so, for what gives immediate and full relief to one person totally fails in another. The practice of smoking the leaves and stems of stramonium or thorn-apple, is now extensively and popularly resorted to; with some it succeeds admirably, to others it seems to be hurtful,—it may be tried. A pipe of tobacco often aflbrds relief. Antispasmodics and stimulants, as might be expected, are fi-equently beneficial. Ether and laudanum is a favourite combination; half a tea-spoonful of the former, along with twenty drops of the latter, in a wine-glassful of water. A tea- spoonful of sal volatile may be substituted for the ether, but is scarcely so efficacious. Assa- fcetida, henbane, hydrocyanic acid, all power- ful antispasmodics, have occasionally been found serviceable. Bromide of potassium in a half drachm dose, with forty minims of sal volatile, taken in a wine-glassful of water at bedtime, will often avert or lessen a night paroxysm of asthma, and the same may be said of ni- trite of amyl, a few drops of which may be administered by inhalation. Twenty grains of ipecacuanha powder given in half a wine- glassful of water, to act as an emetic, may be of service, particularly if the attack has come on after a full meal, or if there is any suspicion of the stomach being loaded. Some experience much benefit from stiong coffee, drunk without milk or sugar. The inhala- tion of chloroform, a few drops sprinkled on a pocket handkerchief, has lately been found to afford relief; but this remedy, in the first instance, must not be tiled without medical sanction. Sir T. Watson recommends the fumes of burning nitie (saltpetie) diffused through the air of the apartment, by means of pieces of blotting-paper, dipped in a saturated solution of the salt, and dried. One of these, about the size of the hand, ignited, and placed upon a plate or tile in the room, quickly dif- fuses its fumes throughout the apartment. When there is gi-eat dryness and deficient expectoration, steam, inhaled either simply, or with a few drops of sulphm-ic aether is worth a tiial. If there is much acidity of stomach, ten or fifteen grains of carbonate of soda, with a tea-spoonful of sal volatile in a littie water, should be given. Indeed, when an attack of asthma is threatened or has come on, care must be always taken, as far as possible, to remove.