A practical treatise on laryngeal phthisis, chronic laryngitis, and diseases of the voice / by A. Trousseau and H. Belloc. Pathology and surgery, or, An exposition of the nature and treatment of local disease / by John Davies.
- Armand Trousseau
- Date:
- 1841
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A practical treatise on laryngeal phthisis, chronic laryngitis, and diseases of the voice / by A. Trousseau and H. Belloc. Pathology and surgery, or, An exposition of the nature and treatment of local disease / by John Davies. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![He considered it very easily cured, and reports two cases, without mentioning a single symptom that we now attribute to the organic alteration of the larynx and trachea. - From this reproach of ancient and modern authors, we except the admirable thesis by M. Cayol.] No one could better appreciate the value of prior citations, selected without judgment or taste, evincing more patience than enlightened sense and solid reasoning in their authors. Aetius, so often cited by the moderns, has copied almost exactly from Galen. He adds; non paucos hoc modo affectos curavimus. In all we can glean from the older writers, we find only here and there a few obscure observations on the various alterations of the air passages ; but nothing approaching a history of the affection. Morgagni was the first to give a detailed account of the disease, and he appears never to have witnessed ulceration in the upper part of the air passages: so that what he says does not constitute a history of laryngeal phthisis, but has only served as data for later essays. Indeed, the case he reports in letter 15, art. 13, which we shall publish as No. 32, gives no detail of the symptoms expe- rienced. He merely says : she was asthmatic for a long time, that her voice was feeble, and that her physicians considered her phthisi- cal. (Jam diu asthmatica, imminutd insuper voce, a medicis procul dubio ex pulmonibus laborare credebatur. The symptomatology of the case reported in the same letter, article 15, is more complete. We are told how the patient breathed, what was the character of the sputa, the aspect of the throat, and the point to which the pain was referred; but, in the reflections that follow, Morgagni has not established the existence of laryngeal phthisis as a special affection, capable of causing death in any other manner than by suffocation. In his 22d letter, (article 27,) he gives the detailed history of a tracheal phthisis, which he cured, though all the physicians had considered the patient attacked with pulmonary phthisis. He con- cludes, that many of the reported cures of phthisis might have been merely tracheal. It is surprising, that the reflections he made upon the latter affec- tion did not lead him to apply them also to ulcers of the larynx, of which he had before spoken, and thence to conclude the possibility of consumption being a consequence of ulcerative action in the upper parts of the air passages. Borsieri,2 seizing the observation of Morgagni, we have just cited, stated positively that the larynx and trachea might become the seat of ulcerations capable of producing hectic and death. He is then the first who spoke of laryngeal phthisis in the true sense of the term. In paragraphs fifty-seven and sixty-two, of his fourth 1 Recherches sur la phthisie tracheale. Paris, 1810, in 4to. 2 Institutiones Medicinae Practical Berolini, 1826, torn. vi. § 57 & 62.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21160430_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
