Homoeopathic domestic medicine / by J. Laurie ; arranged as a pratical work for students ; containing a glossary of medical terms.

  • Laurie, Joseph, -1865.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathic domestic medicine / by J. Laurie ; arranged as a pratical work for students ; containing a glossary of medical terms. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    on the slightest exertion. In this state the patient continues for a considerable time, sometimes even for several years, until at length the symptoms of confirmed consumption are developed by the invasion of an inflammatory attack proceed- ing from cold or some other irritating cause.* When we take the general symptoms in conjunction with the physical signs, the diagnosis of phthisis pulmonalis is, in general, unattended with difficulty. It is true, that in the early stage, when the miliary indurations are equally diffused or scattered through both lungs, they do not give rise to any marked diminution or change in the respiratory murmur, or in the resonance of the thorax on percussion. But it much more frequently happens that the indurations, even in the early stage, accumulate in clusters, particularly about the apices of the lungs, and usually more on one side than the other. The sound, on percussion, will therefore generally be found dull at the clavicle (more commonly the left) and the subclavicular region; the breath-sound during expiration will, at the same time, be unusually audible, and the voice will transmit a diffused resonance or preternatural clearness. When the spaces immediately beneath the clavicles give no signs of disease or discrepancy of sound, the regions below, at the sides, and at the back, should be examined (between the scapulas in the case of children, in particular). A slight flattening is sometimes observable under the clavicles. On comparing the movements of the two sides of the chest, when the patient breathes deeply, a difference in their individual mobility will frequently be perceived. When the disease has attained the suppurative stage, and the tubercles have con- sequently become soft, or entirely liquid, a clicking or bub- bling sound will be heard either under one of the clavicles or above the spine of one of the scapulas. As the evacua- tion of the softened matter of the vomica progresses, a more continued gurgling, or the so-called cavernous rhoncus, will * Hoarseness is often an early accompanying symptom of phthisis. Laryn- geal phthisis, with thickening and ulceration of the lining membrane of the larynx, independently of its own serious character as a disease, is moreover very frequently complicated with tubercular formations in the lungs.