The curability of consumption : being the reprint of a series of papers, presenting the most prominent and important practical points in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of the disease / by Francis H. Ramadge.

  • Ramadge, Francis Hopkins, 1793-1867.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The curability of consumption : being the reprint of a series of papers, presenting the most prominent and important practical points in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of the disease / by Francis H. Ramadge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    suppressed cuticular secretion, internal venous congestion, and mucous intumescence, &c, have a share in impeding the advance of diseases that, otherwise, would have had an earlier fatal termination. If climate has its bane, it contains also its antidote. Looking at the question in the light 1 view it, the very variableness of the temperature, so far from increasing the amount of phthisical mortality, actually diminishes it. Tumours of any Sort on the Windpipe, or its Division. These are useful agents in the hands of Nature. The first which may be noticed is bronchocele. The mechanical pressure of this kind of tumour is sometimes lateral, and sometimes in an antero-posterior direction, according to the form and place of the enlargement. The amount of obstruction determines the amount of pulmonary expan- sion, vesicular emphysema, and dyspnoea. I appeal to the experience of medical men, whether they have ever wit- nessed a case of fatal phthisis in a patient labouring under bronchocele ? No cavity can exist in the lungs, in the face of such an impediment. Let me again repeat it,— here the contraction of the windpipe prevents the free egress of the air, imprisons.it in the air-cells, and makes tlie lungs excessively voluminous, i. e., though the bony frame of the chest is pushed outwards in every direction, and the convexity of the diaphragm, diminished, yet the ex- panded lungs not only fill up the additional space thus gained, but would occupy more if obtainable. How is it possible that, under these circumstances, an excavation can exist in the lungs? or that small cavities, formed by the recent solution of tubercles, from some accidental affeGtion, should not be rapidly closed? Those cavities may be formed from tubercles which had lain latent for years, but cannot progress, nor can a new crop arise in this expansive state of the pulmonary tissue. Enlargement of the thymus gland has a similar effect in protecting children from early tuberculous deposits, and many adults refer their dyspnoea! affections to an attack of croup in infancy, which, J. would observe, is always pro- duced and kept up by irritation, from the mechanical