Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The bronchial catarrh of children / by James Carmichael. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![THE BRONCHIAL CATARRH OF CHILDREN. The liability of children to catarrhal complaints is one of the leading characteristics of disease in early life. The bronchial catarrhal affections stand out prominently in this country as amoii the commonest and most fatal of the diseases we meet with in pediatric practice. Healthy children are liable to be thus affected under a variety of circumstances, still more so are tliose debilitated from whatever cause, either acute disease or consti- tutional depravity. In rachitic children particularly such ail- ments are free|uently met with, and are apt to become intractable and dangerous. I purpose giving a short sketch of the clinical features and com- plications of bronchial catarrh in children, and offering a few remarks on the general management and therapeutic treatment of the various conditions. In doing so, I limit my observations chiefly to acute primary or idiopathic bronchial catarrh occurring during the dentitional or predentitional periods of infant life. It is at these epochs that we meet with the peculiarities which distinguish the disease at this time from that occurring in childhood or adult life, and which invest it with such special interest and importance. It is well known that in the extremes of life there is a greater liability to bronchitis than there is in the adult or middle period. The hypersensitiveness and activity of the mucous surfaces in children render them specially liable to such affections, doubtless in obedience to the law of evolution of disease, which holds that organs and tissues are prone to disease in direct proportion to their normal or physiological activity. In healthy children we are fairly entitled to say that there is relatively a greater proneness to the production of such diseases than in adults. In the case of children debilitated from various causes there is even a more marked predisposition to such affections. Among the causes which tern I to produce bronchial catarrh, climatic influences, \\\ i\\\s country, stand out ])rominently. I re- fluent and sudden changes of temperature, and cold and damp winds, must be credited largely in its causation. Alter epi-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21695222_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
