INFLAMMATIONS. 51 



such as every means of obstructing, straining, or otherwise in- 

 juring the pneumonic organs. 



Pneumonic inflammation may happen to persons of any age, 

 but rarely to those under the age of puberty ; and most com- 

 monly it affects persons somewhat advanced in life, as those be- 

 tween forty-five and sixty years ; those, too, especially of a ro- 

 bust and full habit. 



The pneumonic inflammation has been sometimes so much 

 an epidemic, as to occasion a suspicion of its depending upon a 

 specific contagion ; but I have not met with any evidence in 

 proof of this. (See Morgagni de causis et sedibus morborum, 

 epist. xxi. art. 26.) 



CCCXLVI. The pneumonic, like other inflammations, may 

 terminate by resolution, suppuration, or gangrene ; but it has 

 also a termination peculiar to itself, as has been hinted above 

 (CCLIX.) ; and that is, when it is attended with an eifusion 

 of blood into the cellular texture of the lungs, which soon, in- 

 terrupting the circulation of the blood through this viscus, pro- 

 duces a fatal suffocation. This, indeed, seems to be the most 

 common termination of pneumonic inflammation, when it ends 

 fatally ; for, upon the dissection of almost every person dead of 

 the disease, it has appeared that such an effusion had happened. 

 " " There is hardly a case of peripneumony, where a considera- 

 ble serous or catarrhal effusion in the cavity of the bronchiae alone 

 has proved the cause of this suffocation : for the most part we 

 find, that a considerable part of one or both lobes of the lungs 

 is full of blood, whereby their ordinary white spongy appear- 

 ance is changed into a liver-coloured heavy mass, to be com- 

 pared to a piece of liver, and, contrary to the sound state of the 

 lungs, sinking in water. You will find this matter sufficiently 

 established by Morgagni, Lieutaud, and all the later dissec- 

 tors, and with this influence on our practice, that the great 

 point in view in this inflammation is to obviate this effusion, 

 which, when it has taken place to any considerable degree, may 

 be considered as incurable."" 



CCCXLVI I. From these dissections also we learn, that 

 pneumonic inflammation commonly produces an exudation from 

 the internal surface of the pleura ; which appears partly as a 

 soft viscid crust, often of a compact, membranous form, cover- 



