On bronchitis and the morbid conditions connected with it : being clinical lectures delivered at the Middlesex Hospital / by Edward Headlam Greenhow.

  • Greenhow, Edward Headlam.
Date:
1878
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On bronchitis and the morbid conditions connected with it : being clinical lectures delivered at the Middlesex Hospital / by Edward Headlam Greenhow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    lect. ii.] PREDISPOSING AND EXCITING CAUSES. avoid the conclusion, that the former class of persons have a predisposition for bronchitis from which the latter class are exempt. Hence the causes of bronchitis may be considered as of two kinds; namely, predisposing causes, and exciting causes. The predisposing cause, in each case, is some condi- tion peculiar to the individual patient; which, existing pre- vious to the occurrence of the exciting cause, renders him more Liable than other persons to be affected by it. The exciting cause is some circumstance, usually external to the individual, which shortly precedes, and appears to produce, the attack of bronchitis. But although in most cases of bronchitis, we are able to discriminate predisposing from exciting causes, it sometimes happens, on the one hand, that an unusually intense exciting cause suffices to produce an attack of bronchitis in persons who have no special predisposition for it. Thus irritants applied directly to the bronchial mucous membrane, or extreme chilling of the surface of the body, may either of them, when they are sufficiently long in operation, produce an attack of bronchitis even in the most robust persons. On the other hand, it also sometimes happens that bronchitis is gradually developed under the prolonged influence of a pre- disposing cause, without the supervention of any obvious exciting cause. This, however, only occurs when bronchitis is secondary either to some constitutional disorder or to some other local disease. When bronchitis is thus developed with- out the intervention of any special exciting cause, it commonly begins in a subacute form and runs a chronic course. When, on the contrary, an exciting cause is strong enough to produce bronchitis in an individual who is not predisposed to it, the disease usually commences in an acute form. The predisposing causes of bronchitis may be arranged under the following heads, viz.:—