The forms of pneumonia / O. Sturges.

  • Sturges, Octavius, 1833-1894.
Date:
[cbetween 1800 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The forms of pneumonia / O. Sturges. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    8/76 (page 218)
    It is true, indeed, that some authors have described in order certain varieties of pneumonia, but these varieties refer only to as many distinct pathological conditions : they are not mentioned with any view to illustrate the various clinical as]3ects of the disease. For instance, Dr. Todd* recognises, besides the simple disease, four other forms—viz. pneu- monia complicated with acute gout or rheumatism, strimaous, typhoid, and traumatic pneumonia. He rejects the term lobular pneumonia, as referring only to carnification of the lung from absence of air. Dr. Fuller, on the other hand, enumerates five varieties. In the first he places cases which are especially apt to occm* in rheumatic persons, and which are characterised by inflammation of the interlobular cellular tissue—a condition, it must be observed, which has never been actually demonstrated. Next comes lobular pneu- monia—a foi-m which Dr. Fuller admits does not occur so often as has been supposed. The third variety includes all those cases where the disease is of secondary origin. Fourthly, latent pneumonia is mentioned. Its peculiarity, we read, is simply that which the name imphes, and which renders the mischief very hkely to be overlooked. Lastly comes chronic pneumonia—a variety which is said to be extremely rare.f Here, therefore, in a list where a form of pneumonia not known to the pathologist occupies the first place, and lobvilar pneumonia—admitted to be rare—the se- cond, the consecutive form of the disease stands third; and though it is admitted to be a very frequent cause of death, no attempt is made to sketch its clinical features, or to ai-range in order the diseases most obnoxious to it. In this obscurity, one is inclined to inquire whether the various conditions of lung here alluded to have really enough in common to entitle them to be called by a common name; to question whether that pathology is correct which speaks of a low, insidious inflammation stealing upon the lungs in * Todd On Amite Diseases, p. 368. t 071 Diseases of the Cliest, p. 241. This mode of division may give rise to confusion from the clinical differences being mixed up with the pathological. Thus a case of pneumonia may belong clinically to the fourth variety as being latent, and anatomically to the second variety as being lobular; while pneumonia of the first variety is necessarily by its definition pneumonia of the third variety.