A treatise on the pneumonia of children / by Rilliet et Barthez ; translated from the French by S. Parkman.

  • Rilliet, F. (Frédéric), 1814-1861.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the pneumonia of children / by Rilliet et Barthez ; translated from the French by S. Parkman. 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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    tions of the respiratory murmur, supposed to be dependent upon a bronchitis, before the positive signs of a parenchymatous inflamma- tion have declared themselves. Therefore, without denying- the possibility of a pneumonia origi- nally commencing in the parenchyma, in children from two to five years (for we possess examples of it) we regard the occurrence as exceedingly rare. But very frequently it is impossible to recognise any connection between the gravity or extent of the catarrh which precedes, and the pneumonia which follows; so that the bronchitis ought to be regarded as predisposing to inflammation of the paren- chyma, rather than as an occasional active cause ; and the pheno- mena to be those of a propagation of inflammation in continuous textures. Thus, to sum up;—nearly all the causes of pneumonia in children are reduced to the predisposing; and if a change of temperature, a suppression of an habitual discharge, a repercussion of a cutaneous disease, or the exanthemas, are capable of its production, our ob- servations enlighten us very little with regard to the degree of their influence. We have, however, thought ourselves to have observed that sudden changes of temperature had a manifest influence upon the development of this disease. Thus, in two cases, we have imagined that a sudden chill appeared to have been the occasional cause of the appearance of the pneumonia. In one of these a young girl, ill with measles, was seized with all the symptoms of a pneumonia (cough, pleuritic pain, &c.) after putting her feet upon the ground, the eruption being in full vigour; in another^ a young boy, going out the eighth day of the eruption of small-pox, was taken four days after with cough, dyspnoea, and we discovered from the day of entrance all the signs of a pneumonia at the second degree. We have observed, in young children labouring under diseases of the skin or hairy scalp, the falling off of the scabs or the suppression of the discharge, far from being the cause, to be rather the result of the inflammation, and the affection of the skin to be sensibly modified after the full development of the pneu- monia. CHAPTER VI. RATIONAL SYMPTOMS. The pneumonia, once declared, determines in the organism an assemblage of symptoms which we must attempt to comprehend. It has been lately often repeated,1 that children manifest in their ' The authors refer here to the ideas of M. Jadelot, one of the physicians at the Enfans Malades, upon the lines of the countenance a diagnostic of visceral disease.—P.