Hooping-cough, and what it teaches us of the sounds of the heart / by Andrew Buchanan.

Date:
[1880]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hooping-cough, and what it teaches us of the sounds of the heart / by Andrew Buchanan. 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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    Reprinted from “ The Glasgow M<’<lkal JournalApril, 1880. ] HOOPING-COUGH, AND WHAT IT TEACHES US OF THE SOUNDS OF THE HEART. By ANDREW BUCHANAN, M.D., President of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. I. Hooping-Cough Considered Practically. The returns made to the Registrar-General for the month of January sufficiently show to what a vast extent hooping-cough is now prevailing throughout Scotland, and more especially in the city of Glasgow, 135 deaths being recorded, of which 88, or more than one-half, occurred in Glasgow, and 84 among infants and children under five years of age. There are no statistical data, so far as I know, to determine the average mortality of this disease; but an approximate estimate can be readily formed by any medical man of sufficient experience, if he recall the deaths which have occurred in his own practice— and these are too noteworthy to be easily forgotten—and com- pare the amount with the estimated number of his patients. Proceeding in this way my estimate is, that the death-rate in hooping-cough is not more than one in forty, or 25 per cent. This proportion gives for last month 5,400 as the number of cases throughout Scotland, 3,500 for Glasgow, and 3,3G0 among infants and children under five years of age. It is not, then, to be wondered at that so many remedies have been tried for a disease that is not now, for the first time, widely prevalent in this country ; nor will it surprise those who have made a study of such remedies how very few of them have stood the test of experience. Is this, then, a sufficient reason for declaring, as so many writers have done,