Diphtheria and croup : what are they? / by Sir John Rose Cormack.

  • Cormack John Rose, 1815-1882.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diphtheria and croup : what are they? / by Sir John Rose Cormack. 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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    i from its original signification—which was simply stridulous breath- ing—but has acquired entirely new meanings in passing into the literature of foreign countries. A very cursory review, or even a mere glance at British, French, and German medicaliiterature, will at once establish the accuracy of this statement, and explain the strange pathological jumble in which the whole question was long involved, and from which it is only now emerging. Most French physicians of the present day, adopting the views as well as the nomenclature of Bretonneau and Trousseau, apply the names croup and vrai croup (true croup) to ^distinguish it from the faux croup (false croup), the non-membranous affection in which spasm with stridulous breathing is the predominating feature. Many of them in this way include together the non- inflammatory spasmodic affection (laryngismus stridulus) and the inflammatory affection (laryngitis), which latter is nearly always a stridulous affection in infants and young children. It is the “ inflammatory croup ” of various English authors, and was repre- sented by Francis Home as a stage of membranous croup (diph- theria). Home, in his curious little monograph, describes only eight cases, and of these, five are tracheal diphtheria, and three laryngitis. As no false membrane was seen in these three cases, he—like many of his successors—jumped to the conclusion that the false membrane was absorbed, or its formation prevented by the treatment. For a long period, his successors, British and foreign, continued to make the same mistake—and, indeed, till Bretonneau published the results of his clinical study, the error now adverted to was universally accepted as the truth. Cheyne mixed up tracheal diphtheria with laryngitis, and attributed the recoveries from the latter to the energy of the treatment by bleeding and purging, and he asciibes the deaths from tracheal diphtheria to the omission or imperfect adoption of that treatment. In 1810 the Emperor Napoleon offered a prize for the best treatise on croup. Many essays were sent in to compete for the reward. The successful competitor was Albers, of Bremen. It seems very evident that he obtained the prize because he roundly stated that he cured all his patients, and that the practitioners who had not the same success were unsuccessful only because they did not bleed as early and as argely as he did. All the Napoleonic prize competitors confuse together laryngismus stridulus, common inflammatory laryngitis and laryngo-tracheal diphtheria. * 8 ’ Most British authors, when they write about “croup” really mean laryngitis and laryngo-tracheitis. If the term “ croup ” be d^ er?retedo LS1 °f course a disease totally different from oiphthena. So explained—that is to say, interpreting simnle nflammation by the term —I can concur with Pmuch that is Cremari4hlthe ??lo7“g.rem“ks made by Professor Spence in the Ih]M M«rnVf trUCtl''e ad(bS3s.111 Sm'S«ry> delivered before ltisli Medical Association at Edinburgh, in August 1875