Handy book of medical information and advice ... / by a physician.

  • James Warburton Begbie
Date:
[1860]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handy book of medical information and advice ... / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    39/372 page 25
    injurious pressure on important nervous structures in the neck (the pneumo-gastric or recurrent laryn- gial nerves), and thus lead to the spasmodic difficulty of breathing.—(Ley on Laryngismus Stridulus.) The main symptom of this disease, then, is a re- markable sound accompanying the inspiration. This crowing breathing is always established suddenly; very frequently it is developed as the child awakes from his first sleep; at all events, just like true croup, this affection is apt to commence by night. With the difficult breathing there is seldom much cough ; in many instances there is no cough present at all. Another class of symptoms exists, which is regarded as accessory, hut whose presence is not essentially necessary; for the disease may, and every now and then does occur, either altogether without them, or with their presence only feebly marked. The symptoms now referred to are clearly nervous in their origin, and they accordingly in- dicate the participation to a greater or less extent of that important system. Of this nature are the convulsions which accompany the difficult breathing. During these the hands are almost invariably closed; the thumbs strongly bent; the head is drawn sideways or backwards; the muscles of the back are powerfully contracted; a certain degree of lividity of the face exists, followed at no long period of time by pallor, often ghastly in appearance; dilatation of the nostrils; the eyes firmly fixed; coldness of the extremities; and involuntary passage of the stools D
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