Lectures delivered at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street : 1883-1884 / by Robert J. Lee.

  • Lee, Robert James
Date:
[1884 or 1885?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures delivered at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street : 1883-1884 / by Robert J. Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    3i more than doubtful. This was a serious error ; indeed, it would be difficult to find a single example of erroneous doctrine so serious as this for reasons which are self- evident. The peculiarity of the cough is simply that it is due to laryngeal irritation. The cough of bronchitis differs from the cough of pneumonia; and when either or both conditions co-exist with whooping- cough, the character of the cough necessarily varies; but as far as whooping-cough is concerned, the cough is due to laryngeal irritation. You may hear the same kind of cough in children, with large cervical glands and possibly this fact may have led some to infer that in whooping-cough the glands are affected. In the successive stages of this disease there are many symptoms quite as important, if not more deserving of observation than the whoop. There are, firstly, the sym- ptoms of feverish disturbance which belong to the stage of incubation, the loss of appetite, refusal of food, rise of evening temperature, and wasting. There is nothing very definite, it is true, about these conditions, and for that very reason they deserve close attention. The study of them is necessary if we wish to understand the nature of the disease, and their diagnosis is sometimes of great importance. If, therefore, in a family of cluldren the symptoms of whooping-cough are well marked in one of them, but other children have not been infected, it is well to take advantage of the opportunity to study the early sym- ptoms. If any symptoms are more striking than others, they are those of wasting and debility, which are caused by the fever. I think that these effects of whooping- cough are greater than those produced by' measles or scarlatina.
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