Syphilis / by V. Cornil ; translated, with notes and additions, by J. Henry C. Simes and J. William White.
- Victor André Cornil
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Syphilis / by V. Cornil ; translated, with notes and additions, by J. Henry C. Simes and J. William White. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
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![Clinically the disease begins with first an active stage, in which the patient, often with the appearance of blooming health and feeling well in general, complains that there is, especially on exertion, a cer- tain feeling of weight in one side of the chest (usually the right), with difficult respiration, and not seldom dyspnoea in the evening. After a time, these subjective indications become more intense; the dyspnoea while walking is marked, there is a dry cough, and some- times in the evening some slight asthmatic attacks. A true pulmo- nary catarrh, without fever, may follow, the dyspnoea may become more intense, and there may be, with the cough, slight pains referred to the middle portion of the affected lung. These hardly distinctive symptoms are gradually increased, so that the respiration becomes wheezing, the asthmatic attacks come on oftener and last longer, and there is genei'al disorder of the digestion, with a feeling of weight in the hypochondria. If the practitioner be on the lookout, he will hardly ever fail to find, in this first stage of the pulmonary afiection, the usual indications of constitutional syphilis in the skin, the mucous membranes, the bones, etc. There may be also, rheumatic and ner- vous symptoms, sleeplessness, and blood disorders, such as chlorosis. In the second—the destructive or passive—stage, there are more or less fever, purulent expectoration, even haemoptysis, very severe and frequent asthmatic attacks, general disorders of the digestion and of the secretions, loss of strength, cachectic appearance, and, as the disease progresses, all the various indications of pulmonary phthisis may show themselves. Of those symptoms, the author especially dwells upon dyspnoea, asthma, haemoptysis, and the characters of the sputa. In a number of cases anti-syphilitic treatment led to a rapid reduc- tion of the symptoms and a permanent restoration to health. We believe that the foregoing abstracts represent the best profes- sional thought on this important subject, about which, it is evident, much has yet to be learned before it can be removed entirely from the region of doubt and conjecture.] Although there still exists some doubt concerning the syphilitic alterations, the specific pneumonia and gummata of the adult lung, there is no uncertainty as to the occurrence of these lesions in the foetus. In the syphilitic foetus born before term, in the syphilitic child bom dead at full term, and in the syphilitic children who live a few days, there are found, at the autopsy, in the lungs, nodules or small](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2151852x_0405.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
