1860: Salter proved nervous theory of asthma

Dr. Salter believed asthma was a nervous disease. He believed the evidence asthma was nervous was so abounding that it could not be denied.

While the idea asthma was nervous was postulated back in the ancient era, and even postulated by physicians such as Jan Baptiste van Helmont and Thomas Willis in the 17th century, and William Cullen in the 18th century, it really didn't engulf the medical community until it was re-introduced by Salter's mentor, Dr. Robert Bentley Todd. 

While Dr. Salter didn't accept all Dr. Todd's ideas about asthma, he did accept his notion that asthma was nervous.  By writing his famous articles on asthma that were ultimately published in the 1960 book "On Asthma: Its Pathology and Treatment," Salter brought the idea to the mainstream of physicians, many of whom accepted it as fact, even treating it as a nervous disorder.  Even 20th cen

Even the famous 20th century asthma expert Frances M. Rackemann was a supporter of Salter's nervous theory of asthma.  Even while disproved during the 1950s once the immune system was learned of, his ideas continued to be accepted, even into the 1970s and 1980s.

He even went as far as to offer to the  medical community evidence that asthma was nervous.

• Fatigue and mental emotion bring about an attack
• Remedies that appeal to the nervous system allay an attack, such as stramonium, antimony and chloriform. 
• The periodicity of asthma. It goes away and comes back without warning by recurrence of hay fever, indigestion after dinner, expectoration after a good nights sleep, etc. 
• Symptoms of asthma, such as clear urine (nervous urine), nervous headache, drowsiness, and an attack after laughter or animation. These are similar to hysteria and epilepsy.
• No organic change in the lungs during or following an attack. Post mortem exam of asthmatics shows no organic changes, or damage, to the lungs. They are essentially normal.
• Asthma is muscular in that it is caused by muscular fibre that spasm and squeeze the air passages of the lungs. Muscular disorders like this are always nervous as the nerves are connected with the mind (4 page 13-16)

Salter didn't deny asthma was a spasmodic disease of the lungs, yet he believed this was the result of a nervous condition of the patient.   He said:

The inflammation or congestion of the mucous surface appears to be the stimulus that, through the nerves of the air tubes, excites the muscular wall to contract. (6, page 92)

It was also for this reason he recommended remedies that would soothe the mind of the patient, such as alcohol, cigarettes, morphine, formaldehyde, strammonium, antimony, antispasmotics, and direct nervous depressants. (6, page 33)

His favorite remedy was chloroform because "just a few whiffs, and the asthma is gone; a dyspnea that a few seconds before seemed to threaten life is replaced by a breathing calm and tranquil." (4, page 33)

Thus, he wrote, remembering that the action of these remedies on the nervous system, "it is impossible to help seeing in this the most conclusive proof that the symptoms are due to a nervous cause."  (4, page 33 & 34)

He described one symptoms of asthma as itching of the skin under the chin.  I personally have experienced this when my asthma has been bad, and I think to this day there is yet no scientific explanation for it.  Yet Dr. Salter was convinced the cause was an "irritation at the roots of these nerves.  (5)

So he believed nervous asthma resulted in spasmotic asthma.  Actually, he believed nervous asthma was spasmotic asthma, and in this way he was a supporter of both the nervous and spasmotic theories of asthma.

He defined nervous, or spasmotic, asthma as "paroxysmal dyspnea of a peculiar character, generally periodic, with intervals of healthy respiration between the atatcks."

He said asthma was more common than believed, yet pure asthma, or "asthma without the slightest organic complications," was rare. (4)

However, if the nervous disposition lead to asthma attacks that were frequent, this may result in "permanent injury on the lungs, and even the heart."

He said:

"Asthma is not the less asthma because it has produced certain organic changes which complicate it; and many cases are primarily and essentially asthma that ultimately become, and are called, emphysema and heart disease." (4, page 17)

He was also a realist, and did not claim to offer a cure for the disease.  He believed that since the disease was nervous in origin, there really was not truly effective treatment.  He said:

"...the treatment is regarded as palliative. It must be admitted that the remedies for asthma are of very irregular and uncertain operation: that probably there is no single remedy that is not inoperative in a large number of cases; that that which is useful in one is valueless in another; while there are many cases that resist all remedies. If this intractability of asthma were doubtfull, the large number of remedies that have been suggested would be a sufficient proof of it."

 Further reading:

• 1823-1871:  Dr. Salter offers proof asthma is nervous
• 1850s: Dr. Salter's Asthma Features (2/14/14)
• 1850s: Dr. Salter's Varieties of Asthma (2/20/14)
• 1850s  Dr. Salter's asthma triggers (2/27/14)
• 1850s: Dr. Salter's asthma signs and symptoms (3/6/14)
• 1850s: Dr. Salter's Consequences of asthma (3/13/14)
• 1850s: Dr. Salter's Asthma Remedies (3/27/14)
• 1850s: Dr. Salter's prognosis for asthmatics (4/10/14)

Click here for more asthma history.

References:

1. "The Late Henry Hyde Salter," Medical Times and Gazette, Sept. 13, 1871. 
2. McCulough, David, "Mornings on Horseback," 1981, New York
3. Sakula, Alex, "Henry Hyde Salter (1823-71) a biographical sketch," Thorax, 1985; 40; pages 887-888.
4. Salter, Henry Hyde, "On Asthma:  Its Pathology and Treatment," 1861, London, Philadelphia
5. Kidd, G.H. Dr., "On the pathology of Asthma," Dublin Quarterly Journal of Med. Science," 1861, May,
6. Salter, Henry Hyde, "Asthma: It's Pathology and Treatment," 1864, Philadelphia, Blanchard and Lea

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