PLUNKET’S CANCER REMEDY. See Caustic, Plunket’s.
PNEUMONIA. Inflammation of the substance
of the lungs. When the inflammation extends to the pleura, or covering of the lungs, the disease is distinguished as Pleuro-pneumonia. By most pathologists pneumonia is described under the three general heads of—(1) Croupous pneumonia, (2) catarrhal pneumonia, (3) chronic pneumonia, each of which have, by some medical writers, been subdivided into other forms and varieties.
1. Acute croupous pneumonia. This first description of pneumonia is most common amongst persons of from twenty to thirty years of age, although no age escapes it, and it is generally very severe in character when it attacks the very young or old. It prevails more amongst men than women, since the former, from their more frequent exposure to the weather and to changes of temperature, run greater risk of being overtaken by a very fertile cause of croupal pneumonia, viz. a sudden chill when the body is unusually heated.
It frequently seizes those suffering from chronic or acute disorders, as well as those who are intemperate and drunken. It often assails patients suffering from contagious and acute maladies, such as measles, smallpox, pyæmia, puerperal fever, typhus, and as appears from the accounts of the recent outbreak of Astrakan plague in that disease also. It likewise frequently prevails amongst the poor and badly fed living in the overcrowded quarters of large towns and cities.
The following are the principal symptoms of acute croupous pneumonia, given by Dr Roberts:[113]—
[113] ‘Handbook of the Theory and Practice of Medicine,’ by F. J. Roberts, M.D., &c. Lewis, 1873.
“In some cases there are premonitory signs of general indisposition for a short time. In primary, or unmixed pneumonia, the attack sets in usually very suddenly, the invasion being attended with a single, severe, more or less prolonged rigor. There may be great prostration with fever; vomiting or nervous symptoms, viz. headache, delirium, restless stupor, or, in children, convulsions. The special symptoms are local and general.
“Local symptoms.—Pain in the side is usually present, commonly stabbing or piercing, increased by a deep breath. Difficulty of breathing. Cough also commences speedily; it does not come on in violent paroxysms, but is short and hacking and difficult to repress. Soon expectoration occurs, the expectorated matter presenting peculiar characters. It is scarcely at all frothy but extremely viscid and adhesive, and the vessel which contains it may often be overturned without its escaping. The expectorated matter has a rusty colour or presents various tints of red, from admixture of blood, and as the case progresses, changes of colour are observed through shades of yellow, until finally they become merely like the expectoration of bronchitis. In some cases of croupal pneumonia pain and other symptoms
are sometimes very slight or absent, and the expectoration may be merely like that in bronchitis, absent, or in low cases present the appearance of a dark, offensive, thin fluid, resembling liquorice or prune juice.