A treatise on the diseases of the chest : in which they are described according to their anatomical characters, and their diagnosis established on a new principle by means of acoustick instruments : with plates / tr. from the French of R.T.H. Laennec, with a preface and notes by John Forbes.
- René Laennec
- Date:
- 1821
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the diseases of the chest : in which they are described according to their anatomical characters, and their diagnosis established on a new principle by means of acoustick instruments : with plates / tr. from the French of R.T.H. Laennec, with a preface and notes by John Forbes. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
445/506 page 401
![mouth extended, cough not very frequent and by fits, ex- pectoration scanty, very viscid, frothy, semi-transparent, and intermixed with some yellow and opaque sputa. Percussion yielded a very good sound on the right side, but not so good on the left. Respiration (by the cylinder) was quite inaudible in almost the whole extent of the left side, whilst on the right it was strong, and attended by a rattle and sort of hissing sound. The pulsations of the heart were regular. The contraction of the auricles was sonorous and heard distinctly below the clavicles. The paleness of this man, and the cough to which he had been so long subject, leading to the suspicion of tuber- cles, we examined the chest in several points with the view of discovering pectoriloquism, but did not find it. From these results the following diagnostic was (provision- ally) made : Pleuro-peripneumony of the left side.—Tw- bercles ? Slight dilatation of the heart ? This man died the following night. Dissection thirty-six hours after death. The left cavity of the chest was larger than the right. The right lung ad- hered, throughout, to the pleura by means of antient at- tachments. On the top of the right lung there was a fibro-cartilaginous mass three lines in thickness in its centre, which formed, in this point, the medium of adhesion to the ribs. The substance of the lung was very crepitous anteriorly, but little posteriorly, in which part it was flac- cid and much injected by very fluid blood. This lung was also marbled by a great number of spots formed by black pulmonary matter. [The morbid appearances in the lungs indicating the cure of tuberculous excavations in this case are detailed in the treatise, pages 27 and 28.] In its an- terior quarter the left lung was crepitous, but the remain- ing part was of the consistence of liver, and exhibited the characters of lung in this degree of inflammation (see page 45). The base of this lung adhered to the diaphragm by its whole border; and in its centre there was a patch of 3f](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2106281x_0445.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
