View report page

5
In another of his works (Aphorismi, V. 9), this most careful observer
wrote. " Phthisis most commonly occurs between the ages of eighteen and
thirty-five and again he remarks {lib. cit. V., 11) " In persons affected with
phthisis, if the sputa which they cough up has a heavy smell when poured
upon coals, and if the hairs of the head fall off, the case will prove fatal." This
curious test it may be remarked was approved by Galen, and most commentators
down to Heurnius in the 17th century.
He further wrote (lib. cit. V., 12), that " phthisical persons, the hair of
whose head fall off, die if diarrhoea sets in," and that (lib. cit. V. 13) " in
persons who cough up frothy blood, the discharges of it comes from the
lungs," that (lib. cit. V., 14) "diarrhoea attacking a person affected with
phthisis is a mortal symptom."
It is a noticeable fact that Hippocrates, great observer as he undoubtedly
was, omits to notice that phthisis was communicable, an omission, which, as
has been shown, was made up for by his contemporary Isocrates.
A.D. 100. Artseus, a Greek Physician of Cappadocia, so fully described
the disease, that even to this day, no fuller description of it can well be given.
A.D. 130-200. Galen, the Greek medical writer and philosopher,
considered phthisis an infectious disease, and declared that it was dangerous
to live with persons suffering from the disease.
A.D. 1614-1672. Frangois de la Boe (Sylvius) first described nodules
which by their purulent disintegration form cavities in the lungs ; and he also
recognised the analogy between them and the glandular lesions in scrofulous
persons.
A.D. 1638. Lazarus Riverius in his " Practice of Physik " points out in a
remarkable passage that the chief external cause is contagion, and that the disease
is so infections, that women are infected by their husbands, husbands by their
wives, and that their children die of the disease, and not only by heredity,
" but from the company of him who was first affected."* Also that it is not safe
for a brother or sister to enter into the chamber for the miasmata or infective
vapours, which come from the lungs and infect the whole air of the chamber
so that they beget the same disease in others.
A.D. 1666-1723. Antonio Valsalva, an Italian, pointed out that consumption
of the lungs was infectious.
* Compare this with the Manchester experience of Dr. Niven, p. 29.