Coltsfoot (Tusilago farfara) is a perennialherb of the family Compositae, native to Britain and Europe, with a much-branched creeping rhizome and erect, purplish woolly and scaly stems, which bear solitary, terminal, yellow flowers in early spring. The basal leaves are long-stalked, roundish cordate with black edged teeth and white-felted below. The fruit is a smooth achene with a long white pappus. Coltsfoot contains mucilage, and is used in herbal teas for treating coughs, bronchitis, laryngitis, asthma and catarrh. Research Coltsfoot
Thomas Beddoes was an English physician and author. He was born in 1760 and died in 1808. He was educated at Oxford, London, and Edinburgh. After taking his doctor's degree and visiting Paris, he was appointed professor of chemistry at Oxford. There he published some excellent chemical treatises, and Observations on the Calculus, Sea-scurvy, Consumption, Catarrh, and Fever.
His expressed sympathy with the French revolutionists led to his retirement from his professorship in 1792, soon after which he published his Observations on the Nature of Demonstrative Evidence, and the exceedingly popular History of Isaac Jenkins. In 1794 he married a sister of Maria Edgeworth; and in 1798, with the pecuniary aid of Wedgwood, opened a pneumatic institution for curing phthisical and other diseases by inhalation of gases. It speedily became an ordinary hospital, but was noteworthy as connected with the discovery of the properties of nitrous oxide, and as having been superintended by the young Humphry Davy. Beddoes' essays on Consumption (1779) and on Fever (1807), and his Hygeia (3 volumes 1807) had a high contemporary repute. Research Thomas Beddoes
Consumption, or Phthisis was a name formerly given for various diseases known by emaciation (serious loss of weight), debility, cough, hectic fever, and purulent expectoration, particularly tuberculosis which was unknown at the time. The predisposing causes were believed to be very variable, and around 1900 were reliably listed as: hereditary taint, scrofulous diathesis, syphilis, small-pox, etc; exposure to fumes and dusty air in certain trades; violent passions and excess of various kinds, sudden lowering of the temperature of the body, etc. The more immediate or occasional causes were thought to be pneumonic inflammation proceeding to suppuration, catarrh, asthma, and tubercles in the lungs, the last of which is was by far the most general.
The incipient symptoms usually varied with the cause of the disease; but when it arose from tubercles it was usually marked by a short dry cough that became habitual, but from which nothing was spat up for some time except a frothy mucus. The breathing was at the same time somewhat impeded, the body became gradually leaner, and great languor, with indolence, dejection, and loss of appetite prevailed. At a later stage the cough became more troublesome, particularly by night, and was attended with an expectoration, the matter of which assumed a greenish colour and purulent appearance, being on many occasions streaked with blood. In some cases a more severe degree of blood-spitting attended, and the patient spat up a considerable quantity of florid, frothy blood. At a more advanced period of the disease a pain was sometimes felt on one side in so high a degree as to prevent the person from lying easily on that side; but it more frequently happened that it was felt only on making a full inspiration, or coughing.
At the first commencement of the disease the pulse was often natural, but it afterwards became full, hard, and frequent. At the same time the face flushed, particularly after eating, the palms of the hands and soles of the feet were affected with burning heat; the respiration was difficult and laborious; evening exacerbations became obvious, and by degrees the fever assumed the hectic form with remittent exacerbations twice every day, at noon and evening. From the first appearance of the hectic symptoms the urine was high coloured, and deposited a copious branny red sediment. At this time the patient was usually costive; but in the more advanced stages a diarrhoea often came on, colliquative sweats likewise broke out, and these alternated with each other, and induced great debility.
Some days before death the extremities became cold. In some cases a delirium preceded that event. The morbid appearance most frequently to be met with on the dissection of those who had died of phthisis was the existence of tubercles in the cellular substance of the lungs, most usually at the upper and back part, or occupying the outer part, and forming adhesions to the pleura.
By about 1905 the tubercles were generally attributed to a special bacillus, and this was correctly being regarded as the originating cause of the disease, which could be conveyed from one person to another, that is, it was infectious. In fact, what had been discovered was Tuberculosis, but as it was not yet identified, various diseases were being blamed and the whole grouped under the popular term 'consumption'.
The treatment for consumption at the end of the Victorian era in Britain was based around healthy diet and fresh air, one source quoting: 'The diet should be nutritious, but not heating, or difficult of digestion. Milk, especially that of the ass; farinaceous vegetables; acescent fruits; animal soups; and, above all, cod-liver oil, etc, are usually given. It is also of the utmost importance to see that the digestive organs are in proper working order. As much open air as possible, combined with abundance of nutritious food, is at present the treatment in vogue. With regard to urgent symptoms requiring palliation, the cough may be allayed by demulcents, but especially mild opiates swallowed slowly; colliquative sweats by acids, particularly the mineral; diarrhoea by chalk and other astringents, or by small doses of opium.' Research Consumption
A cough is a sudden and forcible expiration immediately preceded by closure of the glottis or narrowed portion of the box of the windpipe. The force for the action is obtained by a deep breath, then follows the closure of the glottis, succeeded by the expiratory effort forcing open the glottis. The action is performed by the expiratory muscles, that is the abdominal muscles, by whose contraction the diaphragm is forced up, and the muscles of the chest, by which the ribs are pulled down. The cavity of the chest being thus diminished air is driven out of the lungs.
The object of the cough is usually to expel any foreign material in the lungs or air-tubes. The offending material may be there present as the result of inflammation, catarrh, etc. It may also have gained entrance from without. Thus the irritating material may be merely some food or drink which has slipped into the larynx, or it may be dust, etc, in the air inhaled, and the cough is the means of expelling the intruder. But a cough may also be produced when there is no irritating material present. The larnyx or windpipe may be in an inflamed and irritable condition, in which state even the entrance of cold air will excite coughing. Moreover, cough may be produced by irritation of nerves, distant from the lungs and air-passages, by what is called reflex action. Thus irritation of the stomach, irritation connected with the ear, irritation of certain nerves by pressure of growths, etc, may produce a cough, when the respiratory organs are not directly affected at all. Irritation at the back of the throat, as of the tickling of a long uvula, and so on, also produces it. Research Cough
Snotty is slang for over proud and conceited.
Snotty is slang for contemptible; nasty.
Snotty is slang for suffering from catarrh.
Snotty is British navy slang for a midshipman. Research Snotty
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Abbreviations
Research Coltsfoot
