Cheyne-Stokes respiration / by George Alexander Gibson.

  • George Alexander Gibson
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cheyne-Stokes respiration / by George Alexander Gibson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    the second edition tlie exact condition wliidi is nienlionc.l admits of considiTiible di)ul»t. In tlic second edition, wlien critici.sin;,' the observations of Marsliall Hall, and describing the results of some experiments on tlie medulla oblongata,* he says:—Je repetai cette experience, sur un lapin. L'aniinal survecnt a Toperatinn pendant a pen prbs vingt-deux minutes: sa respiration netait plus, k la verite, continue; mais elle se reproduisait de temps en temps, et surtout quand on irritait I'animal. Such arrests of the respiration, as will be seen later, are regarded by some authors as belonging to the same series as Cheyne-Stokes respiration ; they are looked upon as essentially different by others. West'^ briefly refers to irregularity of l)reatliing as frequently occurring in intlammations of the brain and meninges, and later authors in this country also do so. Stokes, whose name, as well as Cheyne's, is now indissohibly bound up with the peculiarity of breathing in question, made it pathognomonic of fatty degeneration of the heart, Speaking of the symptoms of this condition he says:^— Rut there is a symptom which appears to belong to a weakened state of the heart, and which, therefore, may be looked for in many cases of the fatty degeneration. I have never seen it except in examples of that disease. The symptom in question was observed by Dr Cheyne, although he did not connect it with the special lesion of the heart. It consists in the occurrence of a series of inspirations, increasing to a maximum, and then declining in force and length, until a state of apparent apncea is established. In this condition the patient may remain for such a length of time as to make his attendants believe that he is dead, when a low inspiration, followed by one more decided, marks the commencement of a new ascending and then descending series of inspirations. This symptom, as occurring in its highest degree, I have only seen during a few weeks previous to the death of the ])atient. I do not know any more characteristic phenomena than those presented in this condition, wiiether we view the long continued cessation of breathing, yet without any suffering on the part of the patient, or the maximum point of the • Rechtrchfs Kxj>f'riiiu'titahs sur Us l'roprii(e's tt Us Foiic(i'»i.g du Syateme Nerveux, dans Us Animanx Vertebre's, Douxi(iinc t-dition, p. 2(>(i, 1842. 2 Lectures on the IHstates of Infancy and ChiUlhood, p. 16. Lomloii, 1848. » The Diseases of the Heart and of the Aorta, p. 324. Dul.liii, 1854.