asthma the biography dec 2009

[...]... of disease and death from asthma during the decades following the Second World War and evaluates contemporary anxieties about the spreading socioeconomic, political, and personal impact of asthma in the modern, globalized world Juxtaposing scientific and clinical accounts with the more intimate reflections of asthmatics themselves, the following pages constitute not only the biography of a particular... believed, but the result of superfluous quantities of phlegm However, if the phlegm flowed from the brain to the chest, other diseases eventually appeared: But should the defluxion make its way to the heart, the person is seized with palpitation and asthma, the chest becomes diseased, and some also have curvature of the spine For when a defluxion of cold phlegm takes place on the lungs and heart, the blood... Asthma; and the disease Orthopnoea is also called Asthma, for in the paroxysms the patients also pant for breath The disease is called Orthopnoea, because it is only when in an erect position that they breathe freely; for when reclined there is a sense of suffocation Locating the disease distinctly in the lungs, Aretaeus attributed asthma to ‘a coldness and humidity of the spirit (Pneuma); but the materiel... particular tracing emergent debates about the role of nervous bronchospasm in asthmatic paroxysms Chapter 3 examines the links that were gradually forged between asthma and allergies, the proliferation of specialist asthma clinics, and the elaboration of novel pharmacological and psychodynamic approaches to the treatment of asthma during the first half of the twentieth century The final chapter surveys international... all the air which they possibly can inhale; and, in their want of air, they also open the mouth as if thus to enjoy the more of it; pale in the countenance, except the cheeks, which are ruddy; sweat about the forehead and clavicles; cough incessant and laborious; expectoration small, thin, cold, resembling the efflorescence of foam; neck swells with the inflation of the breath (pneuma); the praecordia retracted;... against asthma, orthopnoea, and other forms of breathing difficulties: the juice of the balsam tree given with milk; the sap from Arabic gum trees; perfumes such as cyphi; the fragrant root of horse elder; bitter almond oil; the sap of a myrrh tree taken in pill form; a linctus containing pitch pine; bitumen for obstinate coughs and asthma; the leaves of the weeping cypress, bruised and taken with wine; the. .. term in similar ways in the fifth century bc In The Persians, Eumenides, and The Seven against Thebes, Aeschylus employed the term asthma to describe the panting or breathlessness that could be generated either by fury or by battle exhaustion For Pindar, in his Nemean Odes, asthma denoted both the convulsive gasps of Castor, who lay close to death having been stabbed by Idas, and the ‘panting bodies’... with the risk of death: But if the evil gradually get worse, the cheeks are ruddy; eyes protruberant, as if from strangulation; a râle during the waking state, but the evil much worse in sleep; voice liquid and without resonance; a desire of much and of cold air; they eagerly go into the open air, since no house sufficeth for their respiration; they breathe standing, as if desiring to draw in all the. .. moderating asthma attacks and broader social perceptions of the disease Proust’s portrayal of asthma was characteristically astute In the first volume of the series, Du côté de chez Swann, translated either as Swann’s Way or as The Way by Swann’s, Proust not only acknowledged the possibility that asthma could affect the working classes, contrary to contemporary medical opinion, but also recognized the manner... political theory and justice, The Republic, written in approximately 360 bc For Plato, asthma carried two meanings On the one hand, he used it to refer to the ‘panting’ helplessness of wealthy, indolent men in the face of battle; on the other hand, it also signified, in metaphorical terms, the limited honour or courage that often paralysed political action, ‘as it were from lack of breath’ (asthmatos).2 . and to Asthma UK for allowing me access to the early records of the Asthma Research Council. I am grateful to the following sources for the illustrations and permission to reproduce them: Figure. xi Prologue 1 i Classical Asthma 10 ii Asthma Redefi ned 47 iii Asthma, Allergy, and the Mind 100 iv Asthma in the Modern World 152 Epilogue 199 Glossary 205 Notes 209 Further Reading 235 Index 241 This. demonstrating the enormous impact of asthma on his life, Proust’s correspondence provides evidence of the range of contemporary theories about the causes of asthma. According to Proust, episodes of asthma