On asthma : its pathology and treatment / by Henry Hyde Salter.

  • Henry Hyde Salter
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On asthma : its pathology and treatment / by Henry Hyde Salter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    41/500 (page 25)
    4. That the extent to wliich the nervous system is in- volved differs very much in different cases^ being in some cases restricted to the nervous system of the air-passages themselves. 5. That in a large number of cases the pneumogastric nerve^ both in its gastric and pulmonary portions^ is the seat of the disease. 6. That there is a large class of cases in which the nervous circuit between the source of irritation and the seat of the resulting muscular phenomena involves other portions of the nervous system besides the pneumogastric. 7. That there are other cases in which the source of irri- tation, giving rise to the asthmatic paroxysm, appears to be central—in the brain; consequently, in which the action, though excito-motory, is not reflex. 8. That there is yet a class of cases in which the exciting cause of the paroxysms appears to be essentially humoral. Let us now examine these propositions in the order in which I have stated them, and see what proofs can be brought to their support. 1. The reasons that force upon one^s mind the conviction that asthma is essentially a nervous disease are very nume- rous, and not less forcible and convincing; but I shall here be able only briefly to indicate them, as their fuller conside- ration would involve too great space. They are principally derived from the following considerations :—a. The causes of asthma; b. its remedies; c. its associated and precursory symptoms; d. its periodicity ; e. the absence of orgastic change; f. the circumstance that the phenomena of the disease are muscular. a. We see, in the first place, that the causes of asthma are such as aftect the nervous system, and such as give rise to other diseases acknowledged on all hands to be nervous. Thus, fatigue and physical exhaustion, and sudden or violent