The physical diagnosis of diseases of the lungs / By Walter Hayle Walshe.
- Walshe, Walter Hayle, 1812-1892.
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The physical diagnosis of diseases of the lungs / By Walter Hayle Walshe. Source: Wellcome Collection.
36/328 (page 20)
![to me the more manageable of the two. One of its extremities being accurately fixed on the middle line of the ensiform cartilage, the tape is evenly and horizontally brought round the chest to the same point, from right to left, closely but not tightly applied, care being taken that no crease or other irregularity interfere with its accurate apposition to the surface in all its parts. The total number of inches is then ascertained, while an assistant notes the exact point of the measure corresponding to the middle line of the spinal column. The number of inches found at the latter point gives the width of the right side of the thorax, and by subtracting that number from the total amount, the width of the left division is at once obtained. While the measurement is made, the patient should be desired to hold his breath, so as to obviate any inaccuracy which might result from the movements of the chest. [§ 16. ] In ordinary calm respiration the dilatation of the thorax exercises scarcely any effect on the measured width: in full-chested persons ordinary inspiration produces an enlargement amounting to about an inch. That this dilatation affects both sides equally is rather matter of inference than of actual observation. The mean circular capacity of the chest equals about thirty-three inches in the healthy adult; so high an amount as forty-three inches, and so low as ' twenty-eight, have been observed. The average width gradually increases from the age of sixteen to sixty: so that the mean being thirty inches from the age of sixteen to twenty, it is thirty-four from etat. fifty-one to sixty. The capacity is, on an average greatest in robust, fat, and tall persons, and in those following trades that require active exertion of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33096892_0036.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
