606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



so after she had eaten of it she was attacked "with acute urticaria 

 (nettle-rash), showing large erythematous patches and wheals very- 

 prominent on the face and neck. She then was seized with violent 

 attacks of spasmodic asthma, which obliged her to leave the table. 

 I inquired if she had ever suffered this before, and she informed me 

 she had, after eating hare." * 



Asthma is a warm-weather disease. The first frost mitigates its 

 worst symptoms as surely as it would cure a fever or relieve insomnia, 

 and " hay-asthma," often ascribed to the effect of some vegetable pol- 

 len, is probably a consequence of the relaxing influence of the first 

 warm weather ; for in midwinter, when the air is entirely free from 

 vegetable spores, a single mild day, following upon a protracted frost, 

 may produce symptoms exactly resembling those of a hay-catarrh. 

 The comj)lication of chronic bronchitis, sometimes described as bron- 

 chial asthma, should properly be called bronchial congestion, and dif- 

 fers from an asthmatic affection as a constipation differs from a gastric 

 spasm. Asthma proper occurs under three forms : phthisical asthma 

 (in the last stage of pulmonary consumption), chronic asthma, and 

 acute spasmodic asthma. In the latter phase the disease recurs at 

 longer intervals than in its chronic form, and limits its attacks to a 

 few minutes or hours, but involves a greater amount of distress than 

 any other disorder of the pulmonary organs not excepting the pleu- 

 ritic tortures of pneumonia. In pneumonia the difficulty of breathing 

 consists in its painfulness ; in asthma, in the persistent torpor of the 

 respiratory organs. The patient feels as if the expansion apparatus of 

 his chest were utterly paralyzed, the inhaled breath seems to come to 

 the gate of the lungs and no farther ; no gasping avails ; the increas- 

 ing distress of the air-hunger appears only to aggravate the stubborn- 

 ness of the inert organ. The violence of the paroxysm often tarns 

 the color of the face into a livid purple, the throbbing of the heart 

 becomes spasmodic, but, when the hopes of the sufferer are almost re- 

 duced to the supposed euthanasia of strangulation, the rigor suddenly 

 relaxes, a deep gasp fills the lungs to their very bottom, and a few 

 minutes after the breathing becomes quiet and regular, and only a cold 

 perspiration reminds the patient that he has passed through the chill 

 shadow of death. 



As the primary cause of asthma is as yet unknown, its diathesis is 

 not directly curable, though its latency may be prolonged by avoiding 

 and counteracting the well-ascertained proximate causes. The mode 

 of treatment varies with this twofold object : prevention and palli- 

 ation which frequently differ where we have to deal with spasmodic 

 affections that call for the promptest means of relief. Thus horseback- 

 riding is an approved cure for epilepsy, but during the progress of the 

 fit the application of the specific might lead to strange consequences. 

 Yacht-sailing in a storm would be a bad way of curing sea-sickness, 



* Quoted in the St. Louis " Eclectic Medical Journal," June, 1883, p. 269. 



