Respiratory disease

“ The muscular strength may not be much impaired. The circulation, temperature of the body, and other functions may be but little disturbed. A fatal termination, if not caused by some intercurrent disease, takes place after a very gradually progressive general debility and exhaustion.
As regards the different anatomical systems of the body other than the respiratory system, it is not important to add to the foregoing sketch details of symptomatology. The important symptoms referable to the respiratory system relate to cough, expectoration, and disturbance of respiration. ”

“ In the group of respiratory diseases I think we should include a number of diseases not commonly regarded as such, but in which, so far as can be judged, infection is received by inhalation; and I would, therefore, group together such miscellaneous diseases as poliomyelitis, cerebro-spinal fever, measles, bronchitis, pneumonia, and influenza. All agree in one particular, that attempted preventive measures against their spread are dubious in effect. ”

“ In all probability the protection of the lungs will be protection of the entire system. For it is exceedingly probable that the germs which lodge in the air-passages, and which, at their leisure, can work their way across the mucous membrane, are those which sow in the body epidemic disease. ”

“ Hence the variable condition of the air as regards temperature, degree of moisture, and density, is liable to produce directly various changes in the lungs, or to predispose them to disease; and the contamination of the air with various pathogenic germs and irritating particles in the shape of dust, is a direct source of many lung affections. ”

“ The respiratory murmur may be lessened in certain morbid conditions, such as emphysema and congestion of the lung, and may completely disappear in pneumonia or broncho-pneumonia, a fact which is even of greater significance. ”

“ When the practitioner is first consulted he often finds only indications of the crisis period of a localised pneumonia at the base of the affected lung. The symptoms include fever, accelerated breathing, moaning, loss of appetite, cough without discharge, dulness over the base of the lung on percussion, disappearance of the respiratory murmur in the dull area, souffle opposite the inferior bronchi, and normal or juvenile respiration towards the front, i.e., in the anterior lobe, and sometimes in the cardiac lobe. ”

“ If from cold or exposure, or an extension of the morbid process, the lungs should become involved and Pneumonia be present, the disease will require to be treated by the A.A., and E.E., as directed for that disease, which see. ”

“ Nothing spoils the air of a sick person’s chamber, or hurts the patient more, than a number of people breathing in it. When the blood is inflamed, or the humours in a putrid state, air that has been breathed repeatedly will greatly increase the disease. Such air not only loses its spring, and becomes unfit for the purpose of respiration, but acquires a noxious quality, which renders it in a manner poisonous to the sick. ”

“ Breathing by the lungs is simply the means by which the taking up of oxygen and the giving off of carbon dioxide by the cells is made possible.
HYGIENE OF RESPIRATORY ORGANS The liability of the lungs to attacks from such dread diseases as consumption and pneumonia makes questions touching their hygiene of first importance. Consumption does not as a rule attack sound lung tissue, but usually has its beginning in some weak or enfeebled spot in the lungs which has lost its "power of resistance." ”

“ Even primary diseases of the lungs often exist with peculiar violence, or continue for many years without inducing a consumption. I have never known but one instance of the whooping-cough ending in consumption, and all our books of medicine contain records of the asthma continuing for twenty and thirty years without terminating in that disease. The reason in both cases, must be ascribed to those two original diseases of the lungs not being accompanied by general debility. ”

“ This immunity extends through every age of life. Hepatic and kindred diseases are unknown; of lung affections there is no land that can boast of like exemption. Be it the equability of the temperature or the aseptic condition of the atmosphere, the free sweep of winds or the absence of disease germs, or what else it may be ascribed to, one thing is certain, that there is no pneumonia, bronchitis, or pleurisy lying in wait for either the infant or the aged. ”

“ So serious are the disturbances of the circulation all over the body by these spasmodic suffocation-fits, that rupture of small blood-vessels may occur in the eyes, the brain, in the lungs, and on the surface of the skin. The heart becomes distended, and if originally weakened may be seriously dilated or overstrained; the lungs become congested and inflamed, and any of the [Pg 265] numerous accidental germs which may be present will set up a broncho-pneumonia, which is the commonest cause of death in this disease, as in measles. ”

“ There are three great groups of disease germs which may be found floating in the air wherever people are crowded together without proper ventilation—for most of these disease germs cannot live long outside of the body, and hence come more or less directly from somebody else's lungs, throat, or nose. ”

“ Sedentary habits of life, accompanied with hard study, and too intense application of mind, predispose literary men to Consumption. Loud public speaking, blowing on wind instruments, glass blowing and other circumstances requiring a laborious and continued action of the lungs, produce the same effect. Any one of these causes may frequently exist without injury, but their combined action seldom fails to produce pulmonary disease. ”

“ We can only account for this by believing that these individuals have well-kept up systems, that the lungs are constantly so healthy, and the surface of their bronchial tubes so smooth and pure, that the disease germs can find neither food nor foothold therein or thereon. ”

“ It is remarkable how many of our disease-enemies appear to have a preference for the lung as a point of attack. In the language of Old Man Means in "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," the lung is "their fav'rit holt." Our deadliest diseases are lung diseases, headed by consumption, seconded by pneumonia, and followed by bronchitis, asthma, etc.; together, they manage to account for one-fourth to one-third of all the deaths that occur in a community, young or old. No other great organ or system of the body is responsible for more than half such a mortality. ”

“ This will soon reduce the inflammation and effect a cure.
PNEUMONIA, Sometimes called Lung Fever, is an acute inflammation of the lungs, usually caused by a cold, and commencing with a chill and feverish symptoms. At first there is a dry cough and what is known as the brick dust sputum, and in the advanced stages a peculiar dark tint in the cheeks, known as the mahogany flush. The breathing becomes very hurried, rising as high as forty respirations per minute. It is an exceedingly rapid and frequently fatal form of disease. ”

“ It is well known to sanitarians that such a mode of changing the air is inimical to health, being not only a direct cause, but a fruitful means of disseminating disease."—Local Government Journal on Report to Parliament by the Local Government Board. ”

“ Yet here the danger of bad air is intensified. The expired breath of the patient is peculiarly threatening to himself as well as to others. Nature is seeking to throw off the poison of the disease. The scavengers of the body are all at work. The breath and the insensible perspiration are loaded with impurities. ”

“ A deficiency of oxygen and an accumulation of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, produce injurious effects, however, long before the asphyxiating point is attained. Headache, drowsiness, and uneasiness occur when less than one per cent. of the oxygen of the atmosphere is replaced by other matters, and the constant breathing of such an atmosphere lowers vitality and predisposes to disease.
Therefore, every human being should be supplied, by proper ventilation, with a sufficient supply of fresh air. ”

“ It is accompanied by an increased secretion of mucus, and consequent coughing.
3. Pleurisy is an inflammation of the pleura. It is sometimes caused by an injury to the ribs, and results in a secretion of water within the membrane.
4. Pneumonia (pneuma, breath) is an inflammation of the lungs, affecting chiefly the air cells.
5. Consumption is a disease which destroys the substance of the lungs. Like other lung difficulties, it is caused largely by a want of pure air, a liberal supply of which is the best treatment that can be prescribed for it. ”

“ The one place of possible danger is in the immediate vicinity of a person suffering from a disease affecting the air passages, the mouth, throat, or lungs, such as a ‘cold’ or tuberculosis. Such a person may give out the characteristic microbe for a distance of a few feet from his body, not in quiet expiration, for simple expired air is sterile, but attached to droplets that may be expelled in coughing, sneezing, or forcible speaking. ”

“ Hence it is that sick rooms are poorly ventilated, and patients are oppressed by a superabundance of garments and bedclothes. The air which patients are made to breathe, having been already breathed and rebreathed, is loaded with pulmonary exhalations. Cutaneous emanations are allowed to remain in contact with the body, as well as to pervade the atmosphere. Patients not confined to the bed, especially those affected with pulmonary disease, are overloaded with clothing, which becomes saturated with perspiration, and is seldom changed, for fear of the dreaded "cold."... ”

“ On the other hand, we resort to places of assembly, and draw into our mouths air loaded with effluvia from the lungs, skin, and clothing of every individual in the promiscuous crowd—exhalations offensive, to a certain extent, from the most healthy individuals; but when arising from a living mass of skin and lungs, in all stages of evaporation, disease, and putridity,—prevented by the walls and ceiling from escaping—they are, when thus concentrated, in the highest degree deleterious and loathsome. ”

“ There can be little doubt that in many, perhaps in most instances, the disease-producing germs enter the body with the air we breathe. At any rate, the organism presents no other gate so accessible to germs as the lungs. Moreover, it has been shown that an air artificially impregnated with living germs can infect animals through the lungs. ”

“ Furthermore, the air expired from the infected lung is sensibly hot, especially if the inflammation is of the erysipelatous variety, and, as a consequence, the patient shows a disposition to draw long breaths, knowing that the cold air which he thus draws into his lungs will afford him some measure of relief. ”

“ In America from the day of Washington and all centuries before his time, man has dreaded diseases of the lungs more universally than any other one disease. If we compare pulmonary diseases with other maladies we find more persons die of consumption, pneumonia, bronchitis and nervous coughs than from smallpox, typhus and bilious fever and all other fevers combined. ”

“ In pneumonia the difficulty of breathing consists in its painfulness; in asthma, in the persistent torpor of the respiratory organs. The patient feels as if the expansion apparatus of his chest were utterly paralyzed, the inhaled breath seems to come to the gate of the lungs and no farther ”

“ With the access of the hot stage the characteristic symptoms of lung disease are manifested, at first resembling those of congested lungs, but less severe than those given under that head. There is a distinct increase of the body temperature; the visible mucous membranes are suffused with a blush; the expired air feels hot upon the hand; the breathing, 30 to 40 per minute, is short and accompanied by much lifting of the flanks— (labored) ; the cough is deep as if coming from the depth of the chest, but not so hard nor so painful as in bronchitis ”

“ The lungs can easily be kept in good condition, and when we ponder on the beautiful and effective way in which nature has equipped us with a respiratory apparatus and an inexhaustible store of oxygen, surely we must understand the folly of not helping ourselves to what is so vital, yet absolutely free.
Wrong eating and impure air are largely responsible for all kinds of respiratory troubles, from a simple cold to the most aggravated form of pulmonary tuberculosis. ”

“ If the general regimen is strictly hygienic, the position as thus described will, so far from working any harm, prove of advantage—favoring free breathing, as well as the fullest rest of the body. Where there is shortness of breath and difficulty in105 breathing, the patient is inclined to cultivate the habit of narrowing the shoulders, and so bolstering himself in bed as to still further shorten the breath, thus temporarily easing the difficulty, but finally increasing the disease. ”

“ In resolution which is the most favorable termination the febrile and other symptoms subside and the exudations in the effused lung undergo a process of liquefaction and absorption until neither auscultation, nor percussion nor even the examination of the lung after death will show the slightest trace of the pre-existent disease. ”

“ The lungs may sink as a result of disease. 2. Respiration, even in healthy lungs, may be so imperfect that they may sink. 3. Emphysema pulmonum neonatorum. 4. Putrefaction. 5. Artificial inflation.
1. That in consequence of disease the entire lungs, or portions of them, may sink, and yet respiration may have taken place. Disease of the lung may occur previously to birth or soon afterwards, but it is scarcely probable that the disease would attack every portion of the [Pg 172] lung. Parts, doubtless, small in proportion to the diseased part, may yet have been sufficiently inflated to float. ”

“ When once the disease has obtained a foothold in the body its course, like one of Napoleon's campaigns, is short, sharp, and decisive. Beginning typically with a vigorous chill, sometimes so suddenly as to wake the patient out of a sound sleep, followed by a stabbing pain in the side, cough, high fever, rapid respiration, the sputum rusty or orange-colored from leakage of blood from the congested lung, within forty-eight hours the attacked area of the lung has become congested ”