SPASMODIC AFFECTIONS. 459 



the convulsive cough and hooping, bringing on at the same 

 time a more free expectoration, generally removes the danger. 



When the disease is fully formed, if the fits are neither fre- 

 quent nor violent, with moderate expectoration, and the patient, 

 during the intervals of the fits, is easy, keeps his appetite, gets 

 sleep, and is without fever or difficult breathing, the disease is 

 attended with no danger; and these circumstances becoming daily 

 more favourable, the disease very soon spontaneously terminates. 



An expectoration, either very scanty or very copious, is at- 

 tended with danger, especially if the latter circumstance is 

 attended with great difficulty of breathing. 



Those cases in which the fits terminate by a vomiting, and 

 are immediately followed by a craving of food, are generally 

 without danger. 



A moderate haemorrhagy from the nose often proves salu- 

 tary ; but very large hsemorrhagies are generally very hurful. 



This disease coming upon persons under a state of much de- 

 bility, has very generally an unhappy event. 



The danger of this disease sometimes arises from the violence 

 of the fits of coughing, occasioning apoplexy, epilepsy, or im- 

 mediate suffocation. But these accidents are very rare ; and 

 the danger of the disease seems generally to be in proportion to 

 the fever and dyspnrea attending it. 



" These are the remarks which I have to make on the pa- 

 thology of the disease ; for I dare not venture to say any thing 

 towards a theory. I have no conception of what is the circum- 

 stance of the peculiar contagion which determines it to the 

 lungs ; and I know nothing of this contagion being analogous to 

 the contagious catarrh, or concerned with the matter of perspi- 

 ration. If the disease consisted entirely of catarrhal symptoms, 

 we might say so, but we have no view of explaining the con- 

 vulsive motion, its particular circumstances, or the singularity of 

 its duration. Even its contagious nature gives difficulty, as we 

 have nothing analogous in other cases." 



MCCCCXIV. The cure of this disease has been always con- 

 sidered as difficult, whether the purpose be to obviate its fatal 

 tendency when it is violent, or merely to shorten the course of 

 it when it is mild. When the contagion is recent, and conti- 

 nues to act, we neither know how to correct^ nor how to expel 



