Pulmonary consumption, bronchitis, asthma, chronic cough, and various other diseases of the chest, successfully treated by medicated inhalations / by Alfred Beaumont Maddock.
- Date:
- 1861
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Pulmonary consumption, bronchitis, asthma, chronic cough, and various other diseases of the chest, successfully treated by medicated inhalations / by Alfred Beaumont Maddock. 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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![Sir John Forbes, M.D., Physician to Her Majesty’s House- hold, and late editor of the ‘British and Foreign Medical Beview,’ makes the following judicious remarks upon the efficacy of inhalations in asthmatic affections :— “We are disposed to look to this class of remedies with considerable hopes of success. Legitimate reasoning and strong analogy, at least, are in their favour ; and it cannot now be denied that a good deal of direct experiment can also be brought to testify in behalf of some of them. The most common, if not the general cause of asthma, is, as we have seen, permanent alteration of the mucous membrane of the bronchi, frequently characterised by obvious signs and symptoms, sometimes only inferred from the morbid sensibility of the part to external influences. Although we know that similar affections of other parts are curable by general means, still we find that, when we are enabled to combine with these applications that act directly upon the seat of the disease, the result is frequently much more speedy and certain. This is the case in diseases of the external skin, of the stomach and bowels, and in various local affections of the mucous outlets of the body. We are well aware that applications of this kind are fre- quently very injurious, in place of being beneficial; but this is an argument against their improper use only. Every physician must have witnessed the extraordinary and instantaneous benefit afforded by local applications to the urethra, the throat, the eye, in cases which had been for weeks or months unrelieved by general treat- ment. In the dry catarrh [bronchitis] we have a morbid state of the mucous membrane very analogous to some of the affections now alluded to ; and although, as in these, the injudicious or improper use of local applications is likely to increase irritation in place of allaying it, it does not certainly seem unreasonable, a priori, to expect that due care in adapting the particular remedy to the indi- vidual case might be followed by results equally happy. The history of asthma affords ample proof that the return of the pa- roxysms is very much influenced by the direct applications made accidentally to the bronchial membrane.” In every stage and form of Asthmatic and Bronchial disease inhalation, when properly directed, affords certain and prompt relief, and in the great majority of cases so alters the condition of the mucous membrane, and overcomes the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21966643_0034.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
