A rational exposition of the physical signs of the diseases of the lungs and pleura : illustrating their pathology, and facilitating their diagnosis / by Charles J.B. Williams.

  • Williams, Charles J. B. (Charles James Blasius), 1805-1889.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A rational exposition of the physical signs of the diseases of the lungs and pleura : illustrating their pathology, and facilitating their diagnosis / by Charles J.B. Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    certainty. Ages have passed away without leav- ing us materially improved in our diagnosis after the old method : another is now offered to us, on the more certain and intelligible basis of physics, which discovers signs which are identical with the physical nature of the disease. There are two classes of sounds from which a knowledge may be obtained of the state of the thoracic viscera. One description or class is, for the most part, naturally produced by the mo- tions of the organs within the chest, and is heard by the direct or mediate application of the ear to its parietes. These are the signs of ausculta- tion. The other class of sounds is produced artificially by striking the chest; these consit- tute the signs of percussion. These last I shall first notice, not that they are prior in impor- tance, but because they are more simple, and are generally consulted in examination before the fuller and more satisfactory ones of ausculta- tion. Section I.—On Percussion. The chest of a person in health yields, when struck lightly by the ends of the fingers, a hollow and somewhat drum-like sound. The resonance thus produced arises from the air contained within, in the spongy tissue of the lungs, which receives the impulse through the