Chronic bronchitis may arise as the result of repeated attacks of the acute form, or it may exist altogether independently. It occurs more frequently among persons advanced in life than among the young, although no age is exempt from it. The usual history of this form of bronchitis is that of a cough recurring during the colder seasons of the year, and in its earlier stages, departing entirely in summer, so that it is frequently called “winter cough.” In many persons subject to it, however, attacks are apt to be excited at any time by very slight causes, such as changes in the weather; and in advanced cases of the disease the cough is seldom altogether absent. The symptoms and auscultatory signs of chronic bronchitis are on the whole similar to those pertaining to the acute form, except that the febrile disturbance and pain are much less marked. The cough is usually more troublesome in the morning than during the day. There is usually free and copious expectoration, and occasionally this is so abundant as to constitute what is termed bronchorrhoea.
Chronic bronchitis leads to alterations of structure in the affected bronchial tubes, their mucous membrane becoming thickened or even ulcerated, while occasionally permanent dilatation of the bronchi takes place, often accompanied with profuse foetid expectoration. In long-standing cases of chronic bronchitis the nutrition of the lungs becomes impaired, and dilatation of the air-tubes (emphysema) and other complications result, giving rise to more or less constant breathlessness.
Chronic bronchitis may arise secondarily to some other ailment. This is especially the case in Bright’s disease of the kidneys and in heart disease, of both of which maladies it often proves a serious complication, also in gout and syphilis. The influence of occupation is seen in the frequency in which persons following certain employments suffer from chronic bronchitis. Hirt has shown that the inhalation of vegetable dust is very liable to produce bronchitis through the irritation produced by the dust particles and the growth of organisms carried in with the dust. Consequently, millers and grain-shovellers are especially liable to it, while next in order come weavers and workers in cotton factories.
The treatment to be adopted in chronic bronchitis depends upon the severity of the case, the age of the patient and the presence or absence of complications. Attention to the general health is a matter of prime importance in all cases of the disease, more particularly among persons whose avocations entail exposure, and tonics with cod-liver oil will be found highly advantageous. The use of a respirator in very cold or damp weather is a valuable means of protection. In those aggravated forms of chronic bronchitis, where the slightest exposure to cold air brings on fresh attacks, it may become necessary, where circumstances permit, to enjoin confinement to a warm room or removal to a more genial climate during the winter months.
BRONCHOTOMY (Gr. βρόγχος, wind-pipe, and τέμνειν, to cut), a medical term used to describe a surgical incision into the throat; now largely superseded by the terms laryngotomy, thyrotomy and tracheotomy, which indicate more accurately the place of incision.
BRONCO, usually incorrectly spelt Broncho (a Spanish word meaning rough, rude), an unbroken or untamed horse, especially in the United States, a mustang; the word entered America by way of Mexico.
BRÖNDSTED, PETER OLUF (1780–1842), Danish archaeologist and traveller, was born at Fruering in Jutland on the 17th of November 1780. After studying at the university of Copenhagen he visited Paris in 1806 with his friend Georg Koes. After remaining there two years, they went together to Italy. Both were zealously attached to the study of antiquities; and congeniality of tastes and pursuits induced them, in 1810, to join an expedition to Greece, where they excavated the temples of Zeus in Aegina and of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadia. After three years of active researches in Greece, Bröndsted returned to Copenhagen, where, as a reward for his labours, he was appointed professor of Greek in the university. He then began to arrange and prepare for publication the vast materials he had collected during his travels; but finding that Copenhagen did not afford him the desired facilities, he exchanged his professorship for the office of Danish envoy at the papal court in 1818, and took up his abode at Rome. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Sicily and the Ionian Isles to collect additional materials for his great work. In 1826 he went to London, chiefly with a view of studying the Elgin marbles and other remains of antiquity in the British Museum, and became acquainted with the principal archaeologists of England. From 1828–1832 he resided in Paris, to superintend the publication of his Travels, and then returned to Copenhagen on being appointed director of the museum of antiquities and the collection of coins and medals. In 1842 he became rector of the university; but a fall from his horse caused his death on the 26th of June. His principal work was the Travels and Archaeological Researches in Greece (in German and French, 1826–1830), of which only two volumes were published, dealing with the island of Ceos and the metopes of the Parthenon.
BRONGNIART, ADOLPHE THÉODORE (1801–1876), French botanist, son of the geologist Alexandre Brongniart, was born in Paris on the 14th of January 1801. He soon showed an inclination towards the study of natural science, devoting himself at first more particularly to geology, and later to botany, thus equipping himself for what was to be the main occupation of his life—the investigation of fossil plants. In 1826 he graduated as doctor of medicine with a dissertation on the Rhamnaceae; but the career which he adopted was botanical, not medical. In 1831 he became assistant to R. L. Desfontaines at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, and two years later succeeded him as professor, a position which he continued to hold until his death in Paris on the 18th of February 1876.
Brongniart was an indefatigable investigator and a prolific writer, so that he left behind him, as the fruit of his labours, a large number of books and memoirs. As early as 1822 he published a paper on the classification and distribution of fossil plants (Mém. Mus. Hist. Nat. viii.). This was followed by several papers chiefly bearing upon the relation between extinct and existing forms—a line of research which culminated in the publication of the Histoire des végétaux fossiles, which has earned for him the title of “father of palaeobotany.” This great work was heralded by a small but most important “Prodrome” (contributed to the Grand Dictionnaire d’Hist. Nat., 1828, t. lvii.) which brought order into chaos by a classification in which the fossil plants were arranged, with remarkably correct insight, along with their nearest living allies, and which forms the basis of all subsequent progress in this direction. It is of especial botanical interest, because, in accordance with Robert Brown’s discoveries, the Cycadeae and Coniferae were placed in the new group Phanérogames gymnospermes. In this book attention was also directed to the succession of forms in the various geological periods, with the important result (stated in modern terms) that in the Palaeozoic period the Pteridophyta are found to predominate; in the Mesozoic, the Gymnosperms; in the Cainozoic, the Angiosperms, a result subsequently more fully stated in his “Tableau des genres de végétaux fossiles” (D’Orbigny, Dict. Univ. d’Hist. Nat., 1849). But the great Histoire itself was not destined to be more than a colossal fragment; the publication of successive parts proceeded regularly from 1828 to 1837, when the first volume was completed, but after that only three parts of the second volume appeared. Brongniart, no doubt, was overwhelmed with the continually increasing magnitude of the task that he had undertaken. Apart from his more comprehensive works, his most important palaeontological contributions are perhaps his observations on the structure of Sigillaria (Arch. Mus. Hist. Nat. i., 1839) and his researches (almost the last he undertook) on fossil seeds, of which a full account was published posthumously in 1880. His activity was by no means confined to palaeobotany, but extended into all branches of botany, more particularly anatomy and phanerogamic taxonomy. Among his achievements in these directions the most notable is the memoir “Sur la génération et le développement de l’embryon des Phanérogames” (Ann. Sci. Nat. xii., 1827). This is remarkable in that it contains the
