2 >\ Pearson on expectorated Matter. 317 
provided the matter was unmixed with other things. It 
usually floated, or was suspended in water, when first expec- 
torated ; but on standing in the water it fell to the bottom, 
evidently owing to the disengagement of air bubbles. 
By standing exposed to the air in warm weather, it sooner 
grew foetid than pus of abscesses ; without becoming opaque. 
Neither could I render it opaque or thicker, by exposure to a 
stream of oxygen gas for an hour ; or by exposure of it in a 
jar of this gas for a month. 
3. The opaque ropy matter above-mentioned. 
1st. It is secreted most copiously in that very common, and 
extensively epidemial disease of our climate, the winter-cough , 
occasioned by tubercles, to the amount of half a pint to a pint 
in twenty-four hours ; especially during the winter season for 
several successive years, and sometimes during the whole of 
a long life, after the age of forty or fifty years. 2dly. It is 
often the expectorated matter of the pulmonary consumption 
of young persons,, also occasioned by tubercles, but frequently 
mistaken for the pus- of abscesses or vomicae. 3dly. It ap- 
pears, oftentimes, in pneumonic or bronchial inflammation, 
with fever, seemingly being a beneficial discharge ; as well 
as in some instances at the close of a fever without conco- 
mitant inflammation of the lungs. 4thly. A severe paroxysm 
of spasmodic asthma is often terminated in the excretion of 
this kind of matter. 5thly. A secreted substance of this sort 
is sometimes expectorated in various chronical organic dis- 
eases of the lungs, the heart, aorta, and parts contiguous 
to the lungs, which occasion difficult transmission of blood 
through them. 
In all these instances the m. tier by expectoration is of the 
mdcccix. T t 
