Observations upon the modes of treatment of pleurisy with effusion, with special reference to the therapeutic value of thoracentasis / by Joseph Carne-Ross.

Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations upon the modes of treatment of pleurisy with effusion, with special reference to the therapeutic value of thoracentasis / by Joseph Carne-Ross. 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.

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    PREFACE. ^YJORE than four centuries before the commencement of the Christian era, a disease, characterised by fever and severe pain in the side, had been differentiated from other morbid states, and had received the name Pleurisy. That Hippocrates had a good knowledge of this disease, is beyond doubt; for he has left precise directions for its proper treatment. Yet his clinical methods of examination were, as we know, very crude ; for we find him saying,1 “ That none of these diseases are to be expected before puberty.” He then mentions a number of diseases, and amongst others Pneumonias and Pleurisies ! But, however faulty his methods of clinical examination may have been, his extraordinary powers of observation led him to follow a mode of treatment which is essentially the same as that now followed by many physicians. That he must often have missed Pleurisy when it was really present, and have diagnosti- cated it when it did not exist, is more than probable. But yet his observation taught him to believe, as he says in his “ Prog- nosticks,” that a sharp pain in the side, accompanied by long fever, would most likely end in pus ; and it also taught him that an empyema of the left side was more likely to recover than one on the right side. Quite lately, Dr Cheadle2 has published the records of thirty- three cases of empyema, sixteen of which were right- empy- emas and seventeen were left; of the former only seven recovered, 1 “ Of Air, Water, and Situation.”