Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/127

 of the larynx, if neglected, is capable of superinducing other affections, such as convulsions; and, in these cases, when they terminate fatally, the brain is often found highly vascular. Nay, in some instances, it seems that these paroxysms of spasm, and croupy respiration, may recur for several weeks, and terminate fatally, and yet, on dissection, no other mark of disease is discovered than effusion into the ventricles, or between the membranes of the brain. This pathological fact establishes, in my opinion, the propriety of the term spasmodic croup, as calculated to distinguish it from that of the disease which developes membranous inflammation, and which produces the adventitious membrane; and when we consider how many cases of croup are relieved by the use of calomel, may we not attribute one source of the disease, in such instances, to a sympathy with the liver, which, as I have before observed in infancy, is in a state of hypertrophy? at any rate, it is no uncommon thing to find the period of relief synchronous with a full evacuation of dark-coloured dejections. I have witnessed more than one instance, where relief followed the repeated exhibition of pavements, charged with turpentine, though leeches had previously been applied to the throat without success; and it is probable that the occasional use of enemata in children in whom this stridulous breathing occurs, or wherever the respiration is not free, would, frequently, by removing intestinal irritation, remove the fomes of the disorder, and where that was not the case, tend to mitigate the severity of the threatened attack. It seems as if the disposition to laryngeal disease was so common at some seasons, as to