Practical observations on diseases of the lungs and heart / By Archibald Billing.

  • Archibald Billing
Date:
MDCCCLII. [1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on diseases of the lungs and heart / By Archibald Billing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    him all seems instinctive, from the phases of astro- nomy down to the leverage of a crow-bar. Percussion is another means of ascertaining the state of the viscera of the chest. Plessimeters and other instruments have been invented and proposed for this purpose, but are utterly unnecessary. The proper mode is to lay one finger flat and firmly over the part to be investigated, and then fillip on that finger with one, or tap with the points of two or three fingers of the other hand; every part where there is great alarm, and said he feared Edward was dying, and in a most anomalous state, from a sudden attack of difficulty of breathing, without previous warning or apparent cause. I found him lying on his back with great pain in the chest, and respiring moderately, but with coldness of the surface, and a sensation of extreme op- pression, which I attributed to the want of action of the heart, which was scarcely beating with sufficient power to produce per- ceptible pulse at the wrist. The first thing that struck him and those about him was the idea of spasmodic cholera, of which there had been some cases in the neighbourhood. lie was perfectly in his usual sound senses, and though convinced he was dying, an opinion in which several medical men who were present con- curred, he was not at all alarmed; he even made us smile through our anxiety, by his apt illustration, as he told me he felt as if his heart and lungs were of stone, like the Comandatore in Don Gioi'anni. He did not appear to me to be labouring under any disease enumerated in nosologies, but like a person who had been poisoned; there was a tendency to retch, and a sense of relief from bringing up the slightest quantity of fluid or gas from the stomach. I gave him some tartar emetic, as the action of vomit- ing, besides relieving the stomach, has a tendency to restore the circulation, an effect witnessed in ague. Upon asking him what had occurred, whether he had eaten mushrooms, or other ]>ossibly poisonous substance, he went on to relate, that after dinner, to amuse his nephews, he had been shewing them fireworks ; that whilst swinging about some of these with coloured light he had
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