The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 146 of 653older and more modern treatises in one Series, such a large numbeof names and corresponding categories, that it is only with difficulty that we succeed in mastering them. If we would adopt sucha complicated course, we should have to devote a number of chapters to what we intend to present in one. We need not hesitate toadopt this course, since every homoeopath is well satisfied of thnecessity to individualize his cases. We shall afterwards, whendecribing the symptoms, have abundant opportunities for showingthe most essential forms of bronchitis.Mttology. Acute bronchitis is one of the most frequent diseases of the human kind generally, and it is next to impossible,decide that a special age or sex is more particularly liable to iWhereas it is not generally a dangerous disease when attackingmiddle-aged persons, it is on the contrary very dangerous to children and old people, and therefore constitutes one of the moat important diseases of these two periods of human existence. It isundeniable that the first years of childhood are peculiarly prediposed to this disease. A predisposition of this kind likewise exiamong persons of a more advanced age, and may almost always beattributed to the following circumstances: An effeminate mode ofKving, without adequate exercise in the open air, and not admittiof a free and easy respiration ; constitutional diseases, even sudo not emaciate and debilitate the system, more especially scrofulosis and tuberculosis; irritability of the mucous membranes inconsequence of frequent attacks of bronchitis; acute and chronicdiseases of the lungs.The exciting causes cannot well be traced with positive certaintyA cold and consequent suppression of the perspiration is undoubtedly one of the most ordinary causes, but not quite as common asis generally supposed. The atmosphere doubtless exerts a powerfulinfluence not only in consquence of rapid changes in the temperature, but principally through the changes in atmospheric electricand, as modern investigations seem to have confirmed, throughconsequent changes in the amount of ozone in the atmosphere. Thisbecomes so much more probable, if we observe that a large numberof cases of bronchitis are not so much caused by a damp and cold,as bv a dry and cold wind, such as prevails in our region of counin the summer-season, when the wind blows from the northwestand north. If the temperature of the wind were the main causeof the trouble, "an east wind would cause bronchitis most easily,which is certainly not the case. An epidemic bronchitis spreading166 Diseases of the Lungs.over a large tract of country and being even considered contagiouthe so-called influenza or grippe, depends upon conditions whichdesignate as miasmatic, but of the true nature of which we are asyet ignorant. Secondary bronchitis develops itself secondarily inpersons afflicted with heart disease, emphysema of the lungs, orduring the presence of acute exanthems, or various intensely acutconstitutional diseases.Symptoms. We may dispense with a description of the anatomicalchanges occurring in bronchitis; all we need do is toremind the reader that hypersemia of the mucous membrane is always accompanied by a more or less marked swelling of the same ;http://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt