It is very difficult to ascertain the causes producing bronchocele. Of 22 cases which I examined a few years ago, some lived in situations where the water was hard; others where it was soft; some lived very well, i. e. animal food daily; others chiefly on potatoes and bacon, the ordinary food of the labouring classes. In a great majority, the right lobe of the gland was the largest, and there was no appearance of scrofulous disease. In females of the same family, more than one generally had the disease. Bronchocele almost invariably increases in size and becomes more troublesome during gestation; and, in many instances, remains, after delivery, permanently of a larger size than before. It has been supposed that the offspring of parents afflicted with this complaint, evince more or less deficiency in their intellectual endowments: in one or two of the cases alluded to above, this was the case, but not generally.[1]
- ↑ I have the details of a very singular case of this disease. in an unmarried female of delicate constitution, aged 37. The gland had been enlarged for fifteen years, and various remedies tried with considerable but temporary relief. For about two years the breathing had been more or less affected, the respiration being accompanied with a harsh, sonorous, dry rale, and short frequent cough. On the left side of the trachea was a firm rounded tumour; and on the right ride was another, less prominent: to the former, all the distress, which was occasionally very great, was referred. Great relief was experienced, when the difficulty of breathing came on, by pushing aside the tumour from the trachea by the finger. When the finger was removed, the rale, distress, and cough, returned; but, after some time, slowly went off. Through this tumour a seton was passed: leeches, and cold lotions, were also had recourse to; but debility and loss of appetite slowly increased; and the patient, one evening, being suddenly seized with difficult respiration, which nothing would relieve, died in about five hours (perfectly sensible to the last moment) apparently of suffocation.
