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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    addressed by Dr Patrick Blair to Dr Mead, dated ‘ Cow par of Angus, 6th July 1713/ in which the writer, discussing more particularly pertussis, speaks of ‘ a certain distemper with us called the croops, with this variety, that whereas the chink-cough increases gradually, is of long continuance, seizes in paroxysms, and the patient is well in the interval; this convulsion of the larynx, as it begins, so it continues so violently that unless the child be relieved in a few hours, ’tis carried off within twenty-four, or at most forty-eight hours. When they are seized they have a terrible snorting at the nose, and squeaking in the throat, without the ' least minute of free breathing, and that all of a sudden, when: perhaps the child was but a little time before healthful and well.’ ['Observations in the Practice of Physic, etc., p. 92. London: 1718.] The orthography of Blair thus marking the usual pronunciation, we find the word at later intervals uniformly written as croup. For the origin of this term we justly look for a root which is - common to the whole of the Teutonic tongues, and which appears, for example, in the Icelandic Hrop (clamatio); in the Anglo-Saxon, Hreopan (clctmare), and in Crdvan, prset. creov (cantare instar galU) ; in the Gothic, Hropjan, Hropi (clamare, clamor); and in the old German, Hrdf (clamor): the letters h and c, and v, f and p being g readily interchangeable in these kindred languages. But it is to the Frisian element of our language, the importance of which is becoming daily more recognised by philologists, and to where we find it now most directly represented, that we may refer for the term the closest allied to our primary signification of croup: the modern Dutch word geroop (cry) being pronounced so as to be as intimately analogous in sound as it is likewise in signification. The North of England and Scottish word roop (hoarseness) will suggest itself as referable to the same origin. We are thus carried back to an era prior to that in which the Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, and Dane parted from their common stock; and long prior to the successive periods at which they settled in this country. A term so ancient, so expressive in itself, and so thoroughly and specially L an appropriation of our medical literature, ought not to be endangered by being allowed to^swerve into meanings remotely derivative.”1 ^ It is easy to see from the scope of his work that Charles Wilson takes a symptom—stridulous breathing—considers it as a disease, and calls it croup—a word for which he entertains a strongly expressed veneration and affection, with which, as a Scotchman and an Edinburgh student of the Alisonian era, I sympathize. As i a practical physician, however, long since converted by Bretonneau and Trousseau to views different from those which I was originally taught, I entirely differ from Dr Charles Wilson as to employing - “ croup ” as the name of a disease. Unfortunately, the word has already not only drifted very tar i 1 Ed in. Med. Journal for February 1856, p. 675. I