Contributions to the pathology and treatment of diseases of the chest / by Eben. Watson.

  • Watson, Ebenezer.
Date:
[between 1850 and 1869?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the pathology and treatment of diseases of the chest / by Eben. Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/16 (page 283)
    obviously be no collapse of the air cells at all, and in the latter case the result would be a pulmonary abscess. In proof of this statement, I refer, not to experiments instituted on the lower animals, hut to the history of actual cases in which foreign bodies have been accidentally introduced into the bronchial passages. Two such cases have come within my own more immediate know¬ ledge. One occurred under my own care many years ago, when acting as surgeon’s clerk in the Royal Infirmary. The subject of this case was a little girl who had swallowed a whelk into the “wrong throat,” and that of the other case was a medical gentleman who, in eating hurriedly, allowed a mutton bone to pass through the glottis. This gentleman was attended by my father. In both these cases the patients passed through a very critical state; but instead of collapse, hepatization and suppuration of the lung occurreu, and the foreign body was expectorated. In short, ob¬ struction of the bronchi, if at all complete, would be more likely to produce common pneumonia than the etat foetal. In fine, I think I am entitled to conclude with Hasse, who has given a very able and interesting review of the confused state¬ ments of authors on this subject,* that the organic affection of the lungs to which new-born infants are prone, which was named atelectasis by Jorg, is altogether distinct from lobular pneumonia. We must therefore seek for the rationale of the latter in some other morbid process; and this has been generally done by referring it to some modification of inflammatory action. Guersent was one of the earliest writers on lobular pneumonia, and his opinion of its origin is expressed in the following sentence:— “ Les pneumonies latentes commencent presque toujours par de simple bronchitis que paraissent d’ abord tres legeres; peu a peu ensuite cette affection inflammatoire se communique au tissu vesiculafre du poumon.”t More recently, as I formerly stated, Seifert has given to the disease the name of bronchio-pneumonia, and besides him, many others, among whom Dr. Cheyne may be numbered, have adopted the theory in question. There is, how¬ ever, a numerous class of writers who consider lobular pneumonia a more specific disease, occurring at least sometimes indepen¬ dently of bronchitis, and not simply an extension of that affection to the air cells. Some of these, as Billiard, { consider the lobular inflammation of the lung as essentially different from ordinary pneumonitis. According to that author—“ la pneumonie des jeunes enfans est evidemment le resultat de la stase du sang dans les poumons. Ce sang fait alors, en quelque sorte, 1’office de corps etranger; il concourt lui-meme, a alterer le tissue du poumon avec lequel il se mele, s’organise, s’identifie de maniere a former ce qu’ on * Pathological Anatomy? Syden. edition, p. 251. f Dictionaire de Medicine, tom. viii. p. 96. t Traite des Maladies des Enfans, p. 534.