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.

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    organic muscle ivhich minute anatomy has demonstrated to exist in the bronchial tubes. Altliougli tliis is a propositiou tliat many perhaps miglit think it hardly wortli wliile to set about proving, yet I think it will be well not to assume it, partly for the reasons I have already mentioned (the general absence, namely, of precise pathological views on the subject), partly because it is a necessary stepping-stone to the succeeding propositions, and partly because I think its proof will be the best w^ay of ex- pressing my notions of the ultimate pathology of the disease and my reasons for them. It Avill certainly be an advantage if it can be shown beyond cavil that spasmodic stricture of the bronchial tubes is the only possible cause of asthma, that it is adequate to the production of all the phenomena, that it is a form of perverted physiology that may exist pure and uncomplicated with any organic disease, and that the view that would assign it as the sole essential condition in asthma is—what all pathological views should be—physiological and rational. I think perhaps the eliminative or exhaustive method of proof will be as good as any. I will suppose a case of severe uncomplicated asthma, such as we sometimes see. Now, what have we here ? AVe have, as the sole constituent symptom, dyspnosa—dyspnoea of a peculiar kind—sudden in its access, intense, and agonizing, following a state of perfect apparent health and ease, and relapsing as suddenly, perhaps speedily, and, it may be, without any expectoration, into ease and tranquillity again. What, then, can give rise to such phenomena as these ? We know that the only w^ay in which such an arrear in the respiratory changes as produces a sense of dyspnoea can be brought about, is by a derangement of the supply of one or both of the two fluids, the air or the blood, or by a disor- ganization of the functioning portion of the lung. On what recognised diseases, then, can we fall back, as supplying in
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