Chilly fits occurring in the forenoon, are more favourable than when they occur in the evening. They indicate the disease to partake a little of the nature of an intermittent, and are a call for the use of the remedies proper in that disease.
Rheumatic pains, attended with an abatement of the cough, or pains in the breast, are always favourable; so are
Eruptions, or an abscess on the external parts of the body, if they occur before the last stage of the disease.
A spitting of blood, in the early, or forming stage of the disease, is favourable, but after the lungs become much obstructed, or ulcerated, it is most commonly fatal.
A pleurisy, occurring in the low state of the disease, generally kills, but I have seen a case in which it suddenly removed the cough and hectic fever, and thus became the means of prolonging the patient's life for several years.
The discharge of calculi from the lungs by coughing and spitting, and of a thin watery liquid, with a small portion of pus swimming on its surface, are commonly signs of an incurable consumption.
No prediction unfavourable to life can be drawn from pus being discharged from the lungs. We see many recoveries after it has taken place, and many deaths where that symptom has been absent. Large quantities of pus are discharged in consumptions attended with abscesses, and yet few die of them, where they have not been preceded by long continued debility of the whole system. No pus is expectorated from tubercles, and how generally fatal is the disease, after they are formed in the lungs! It is only after they ulcerate that they discharge pus, and it is only after ulcers are thus formed, that the consumption probably becomes uniformly fatal. I suspect these ulcers are sometimes of a cancerous nature.
A sudden cessation of the cough, without a supervening diarrhœa, indicates death to be at hand.
A constant vomiting in a consumption, is generally a bad sign.