Croup and its specific remedy / by Henry Wigand.

  • Wigand, H. (Henry)
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Croup and its specific remedy / by Henry Wigand. 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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    from simple laryngitis ; wherefore it has been separated from the latter by the name croup. It is not the larynx alone, however, in which this false membrane is formed ; we find it also in the trachea and bronchial tubes ; and, therefore, we have a laryngeal, a laryngo- tracheal, and laryngo-bronchial croup. Bronchial and tracheal inflammation never exists without participation of the larynx, while the latter is found inflamed without affection of the former organs. Some writers, in France and Germany, think the croup a morbid affection of the blood and the nerves of the affected organs. The disease of the blood they prove by the plastic lymph noticed in the same after venesection ; the affection of the nerves, by a kind of asthma preceding real croup, also by the great anguish and restlessness in the beginning of the disease, and the peculiar cough. - . CAUSES OF CROUP. Croup is a disease of children. Only a few cases are on record where adults had been attacked by the same. Nursing children are less liable to this disease, than weaned children from the second up to the seventh year. Plethoric, fat children, with auburn hair, who were always healthy, are attacked very suddenly by this disease, and die by suffocation, a few hours after commencement of the same. Not unfrequently it ap- pears epidemic; without spreading so rapidly as an exanthematic disease, or as hooping-cough. In the ma- jority of cases, we find it sporadic, without contagion. Many children are at once taken by this disease, in countries where the air is kept moist constantly by stagnant waters, and especially near the sea-shore, where north and east winds prevail. This, however, gives no proof of a contagious character. Children who take cold suddenly, or who are exposed to a draught of air when warm, also boys who, with their head and neck uncovered, when very warm, expose themselves to the 2*