Copy 1, Volume 1

The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good].

  • John Mason Good
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    744/752 (page 674)
    Gen. VII. Srec. IT, Pressure augments the pain in Common causes. Produced by acci- dental in- jury, or morbid structure ; inflamma. tion of the pleura, or transferred gout: worms, sy~ philis, or phthisis : sometimes plethora. When strictly idiopathic. SPECIES II. PLEURALGIA CHRONICA. CHRONIC PAIN IN THE SIDE. PAIN PERMANENT: AUGMENTED BY PRESSURE: INABILITY OF LYING ON THE SIDE AFFECTED. Tus species is more diffused than the first, and accom- panied with a considerable degree of irritation; whence pressure, instead of diminishing, augments the pain. The cause is therefore of a different kind from any of those al- ready noticed, and is perhaps most frequently to be found in adhesions of the folds of the pleura to each other, or to the intercostal muscles, or, a thickening in some part of its extent, whereby the play of the respiratory organs is impeded, and a state of perpetual irritation, or a ceaseless tendency to irritation, is kept up. This species has also often been produced by a fractured rib, or some other lesion of the chest; or by some internal malformation, or other structural disease in the organs of the same cavity. Dr. Pérceval, in a note upon this species, appended to the volume of Nosology, refers to a case which once occurred to him, of pain in the left side, acute and obstinate, that baffled all remedies, local and general; and which was at length found to have oni from an aneurism of the aorta. Chronic pleuralgia may also follow from an 1 inflamma- tion of the pleura; or from transferred gout or rheuma- tism. It is peculiarly apt to take place under every dis- ease, which, by lowering the tone of the system, renders it generally irritable and subject to irregularity of action; as is the case in worms, syphilis, and phthisis. The opposite extreme of plethora has, moreover, not unfrequently been found to produce it. Most of these, however, may be regarded as mere sym- ptomatic affections. Among the genuine idiopathic cases