Historical Aspects of Pneumonia

Abstract

The search for knowledge and understanding of respiration and pulmonary diseases dates back to ancient times, in particular to the Greeks. Led by Hippocrates (circa 460–360 bc), the first systematic method for analyzing individual diseases was developed.¹ Hippocrates’ approach to establishing the diagnosis of pneumonia was translated from the original description by Francis Adams of Great Britain in 1859 as follows²:

Peripneumonia and pleuritic affections, are to be thus observed: If the fever be acute, and if there be pains on either side, or in both, and if expiration be attended with pain, if cough be present, and the sputa expectorated be of a blond or livid color, or likewise thin, frothy, and florid, or having any other character different from the common...

which implies in sequence that the clinical diagnosis of peripneumonia is established. His description of the findings characteristic of recovery from the disease is as follows.²

When pneumonia is at its height, the case is beyond remedy if he be not purged and it is bad if he has dyspnoea, and the urine is thin and acrid and if sweat comes out about the neck and head, for such sweats are bad as proceeding from the suffocation, rales, and the violence of the disease which is obtaining the upper hand, unless there be a copious evacuation of thick urine, and the sputa be concocted [sputa are concocted when they resemble pus]; when either of these come on spontaneously, that will carry off the disease.