On bronchitis and the morbid conditions connected with it : being clinical lectures delivered at the Middelsex Hospital / by Edward Headlam Greenhow.

  • Greenhow, Edward Headlam, 1814-1888.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On bronchitis and the morbid conditions connected with it : being clinical lectures delivered at the Middelsex Hospital / by Edward Headlam Greenhow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    body at the time of exposure also influences the effect pro- duced. Exposure to a certain degree of cold when the body is over-heated or exhausted by fatigue or fasting, produces a greater effect than when the body is in its ordinary condi- tion. On the other hand, a vigorous state of the circulation, such as is produced by active but not exhausting exercise, and the habit of encountering atmospherical vicissitudes, will often prevent the evil consequences of exposure. Among the other most powerful exciting causes of bronchitis are the sitting for a length of time with wet feet, the getting wet through on a journey and remaining in damp clothes, and, the allowing clothes soaked with perspiration, by fatiguing exercise, to dry upon the body. Among the exciting causes of bronchitis must also be reckoned such more general and inevitable influences as sudden vicissitudes of weather, which often produces bronchial catarrh in many persons at the same time. Bronchitis is frequently present in several of the acute specific fevers, when it cannot be referred to any apparent exciting cause or special predisposition. It is not uncommon in typhus, and it is very common in typhoid fever. In some of these cases it is due to the hypostatic congestion of the lungs, arising towards the close of the illness, from feeble circulation and the recumbent posture of the patient. In typhoid fever it so often occurs in the early stage that I am accustomed to regard it as almost a necessary incident of the disease. It may be severe, or it may be very slight, and, in the latter case, the sole evidence of its presence may be afforded by the detection of rhonchus or sibilus in the lungs on auscultation. In ordinary cases it is unimportant, and it commonly subsides as the patient begins to amend. Notv/ithstanding the very diverse causes by which bron- chitis is produced it is always, as I have already said, an inflammatory affection of the mucous membrane lining the