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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    thoracic parietes. But in order that the impulse be propagated, these parietes must possess a cer- tain degree of elastic tension ; for if they are flaccid, and yield to the stroke of percussion, no sound will be emitted but that slight and obtuse one produced by the fall of the fingers upon the surface. The natural compact of the chest, with its frame of bone, attached by elastic ligaments and cartilages, and invested by a covering more or less tense, of muscles and in- teguments, is generally well adapted to transmit to its interior the impulse of external percus- sion ; but if the elasticicity of the cartilages be in any way lost, or if the integuments become thickened by cedema, fat or other cause, the resonance on percussion will be proportionately diminished; and these causes of modification of the pectoral sound must be carefully separated from those depending on the state of the internal organs. In the natural and healthy state, as the clear- ness and fulness of the pectoral resonance on percussion depends on the air-filled structure of the lung, and the tenuity and tension of the con- taining parietes, it is evident that those parts of the chest will sound best that most com- pletely present these conditions. Our anato- mical knowledge will therefore point out the different degrees of sound that the different