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.

    61/500 (page 45)
    tations were altered, temporary exaltation and perversion of the innervation of the Inngs supplanting unconsciousness and clonic convulsion. Bearing in mind the many points in their cliuical history that asthma and epilepsy have in common, this case is one of peculiar interest. To this same category of central asthma we must, in strictness, assign those cases in which the paroxysm is brought on by violent emotion, as in that remarkable in- stance I have related of the gentleman who had, on two dis- tinct occasions, violent spasmodic asthma suddenly induced by alarm, from the fear that he had poisoned his wife. In such a case the seat to which the stimulus is primarily ap- plied is the brain itself. Lastly, there is a class of cases in which the exciting cause of the paroxysms appears to be essentially humoral. I have stated that the most frequent of the exciting causes of asthmatic attacks arc alimentary, and that an error in diet, or the mere introduction of food into the stomach, produces bronchial spasm by reflex stimulation, through the interven- tion of the pncumogastric nerve. But is this the only way in which the lungs can be affected by what is put into the stomach? No. Although the pncumogastric nerve is the only single structure that has a distribution common to both organs, yet the venous system affords a very close and intimate bond of connexion between the stomach and the lungs; for any rapidly absorbable material introduced into the stomach is at once taken up by the venous radicles of the gastric mucous membrane, and within a few seconds, having passed through the liver and the right side of the heart, finds itself in the pulmonary circulation. In this way the blood in the lungs is liable to constant change in its composition from admixture with it of the different materials thus taken up by the gastric veins; and, from the absence of secernent or elective power on the part of these veins, is