Children with chronic asthma: care by the generalist and the specialist

We have come a long way since 1882 when Dr. Henry Salter published his treatise, On Asthma: Its Pathology and Treatment. His task then was even more complex than ours is today. He not only worked alone in a medical void, providing care for over 200 patients with chronic asthma, but he also suffered from the same disease. But not only is asthma not an uncommon disease, but it is one of the direst suffering; the horrors of the asthmatic paroxysm far exceed any acute bodily pain; the sense of impending suffocation, the agonizing struggle for the breath of life, are so terrible, that they cannot even be witnessed without sharing in the sufferer's distress. With a face expressive of the intensest anxiety, unable to move, speak, or even make signs, the chest distended and fixed, the head throne back between the elevated shoulders, the muscles of respiration ridged and tightened like cords, and tugging and straining for every breath that is drawn, the surface pallid or livid, cold and sweating--such are signs by which this dreadful suffering manifests itself. And, even in the intervals of health the asthmatic's sufferings do not cease; he seems well, he goes about like his fellows and among them, but he knows that he is altogether different from them; he bears about his disease within him wherever he goes; he knows he is struck; he is conscious that he is not sound--he cannot be warranted; he is not certain of a days, perhaps not of an hours health; he only knows that a certain percentage of his future life must be dedicated to suffering; he cannot make an engagement except with a proviso, and from any of the occupations of life he is cut-off; the recreations, the enjoyments, the indulgences of others are not for him; his usefulness is crippled, his life is marred; and if he knows anything of the nature of his complaint he knows that his sufferings may terminate in a closing scene worse only than the present. Today, this need not be the case.