th diseases are
pain in the chest or side, cough and fever and dyspnoea. Accidents or
sequelae are hemoptysis, empyema and phthisis.
Empima (empyema) is the hawking-up of sanies, with infection of the
lung and a sanious habit. Hence persons laboring under pneumonia
or pleurisy are not necessarily empyemics, but when these diseases
progress to such a point that blood and sanies are expectorated and
the lung is infected, that is when the ulceration of the lungs fails
to heal and corruption and infection occur, the disease becomes
empima, and is with difficulty, or never cured.
Ptisis is a substantial consumption of the humidity of the body, due
to ulceration of the lungs. For when a solution of continuity occurs
in the lungs, the inspiratory and expiratory forces fail. Hence the
lungs do not inspire sufficient air to mitigate the innate heat of the
heart, and the heart fails to purify itself of the fumosity or fumous
vapors generated in itself. Accordingly, deprived of the means of
mitigating its heat or ventilating its fumosities, the spirits within
it become unduly heated, and a consuming fire is generated in the
entire body.
The symptoms of ptisis are a continued fever, greater or less,
detected in the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, thirst,
a roughness of the tongue, slenderness of the neck, wasting of the
entire body, constipation, wasting and shrinking of the finger-nails
and fingers, hollowness of the eyes, pain in the left scapula
extending to the shoulder, pharyngeal catarrh with abundant and
mucilaginous sputum and a tendency to lachrymation. If the sputum
thrown upon the coals emits a fetid odor, it is a sign of confirmed
ptisis, which is incurable. The disease when it occurs in youths and
young persons rarely lasts longer than a year, often terminates in
less time, and may sometimes, by the aid of medicine, be prolonged for
a greater period. If the sputum received during the night in a vessel
is flushed in the morning with warm water, while some impurities
remain upon the surface, the putrid matter will sink to the bottom
(_sputum fundum petens_), and the indications are fatal. Likewise
sharpness of the nose, hollow eyes, slender nails, falling hair,
flattened temples and diarrhoea are of evil omen. These patients
converse while dying, and die conversing (_moriendo loquentur, sed
loquendo moriuntur_). Gilbert, of course, supplies a formidable array
of remedies for the disease, but tells us
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