The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 106 of 653times the paroxysms become so violent that. the child suddenlyperishes by sufibcation. Between the attacks, the coma becomesmore and more profound, and the brain seems to participate in thestruggle. This phenomenon, however, like the majority of deaths,has to be attributed to the gradual poisoning of the blood by carbonic acid originating in the deficient access of air to the lungThis likewise accounts for the slow death. No immediate asphyxiataking place, this suffocative stage sometimes lasts fortybefore death takes place.There is a form of croup which runs its course without thepeculiar croupy cough. Here the gradually-growing danger is overlooked, because the dyspnoea increases more uniformly and slowly.This may be owing to the glottis not being contracted or at leastin a lesser degree. Sometimes the diagnosis can only be determinewith perfect certainty by the expulsion of membranous patches.This form of crou'p is scarcely less dangerous than the former, oit usually lasts much longer.The duration of croup depends upon a variety of circumstances.If the intensity of all the symptoms increases steadily, death matake place in thirty-six hours by asphyxia. In most cases thepatients die on the fifth or sixth day, seldom later, and exceptionly after the ninth day. This period does not include the preliminary stage, but dates from the first outset of the disease itselThe prognosis is in every case very doubtful. Although homoeopathy is justly entitled to claim more favorable results in its tment of croup than any other method has a right to do, yet evenunder homoeopathic treatment croup is one of the most fatal diseases. Moreover the results of any form of treatment are oftenvery much complicated by another circumstance. Membranouscroup, especially if a cure only takes place after the dyspnoea hcontinued for some time, is very apt to be succeeded by dangerousafter-diseases among which lobular pneumonia, bronchitis and acutoedema of the lungs are the most important. These affections arethe most common complications of croup, owing to which recoveryis often delayed for a long time, or is never complete for the rethat chronic bronchitis, emphysema, etc., remain behind.118 Diseases of the Larynx and Trachea.Before discussing the diagnosis of croup, we will add a few remarks on diphtheritic laryngitis which differs essentially from cEpidemic diphtheria, although more particularly confined to themucous membrane of the mouth and fauces, is likewise very muchinclined to invade the larynx. This occurrence generally showsthat the disease is of a most malignant type. The symptoms ofdiphtheritic croup resemble those of the ordinary form of membranous croup, from which the former differs, however, in flome rspects. The patients begin to show laryngeal symptoms after theaffection of the fauces has existed for some time, and the strenghas begun to fail. The dyspnoea is less intense as in membranouscroup ; the inflammatory swelling is less, and the patients do nodie so much on account of the dyspnoea as on account of the generviolence of the disease. The characteristic sopor of the last staof croup does not occur in diphtheria. These distinctions do notoccur in every case, but in the majority of cases. They are easilhttp://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt