Phthisis and the stethoscope, or, the physical signs of consumption / by Richard Payne Cotton.

  • Richard Payne Cotton
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Phthisis and the stethoscope, or, the physical signs of consumption / by Richard Payne Cotton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of its usual locality. The decision was evidently of no little importance to the patient, since, the treatment which mioht cure the one, would cer- tainly only increase the other. The difficulty was at once solved by auscultation; two or three humid clicks were to be heard with each inspiration, and tubercular softening was the diagnosis. Subsequent events proved its cor- rectness, for, in the course of but a very few weeks, there were all the physical signs of an extensive vomica in the place of the former dul- ness, and the patient ultimately died of phthisis. The mechanism of the humid click is as little understood as is that of the dry crackling rhon- chus; but for all practical purposes this is immaterial; it is sufficient to know that, under all circumstances, it tells of softened tubercle. The duration of this rale is variable ; but after a time it becomes larger, louder, more humid, and more or less metallic in its quality, and ulti- mately passes into the cavernulous or the ca- vernous rhonchus, which characterizes the third stage of the disease. After softening has begun, as well as during the whole of the second stage, the neighbourhood
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