Rheumatic Bronchitis. Although many systematic writers on practical medicine make no mention of this form of bronchitis except as a complication of general rheumatic fever, yet cases both of acute and chronic inflammation of the bronchi, of unmistakable rheumatic character, have so often come under my observation that I am constrained to recognize it as a distinct form of disease. In regard to the relative frequency of the occurrence of this class of cases, I find in a brief report concerning 965 cases of chronic pulmonary disease, read in the medical section of the American Medical Association by F. H. Davis in 1877,[5] the following classification of the cases: Chronic catarrhal bronchitis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Chronic rheumatic bronchitis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Chronic bronchitis accompanied by gastric derangement and spasmodic dyspnoea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Chronic bronchitis, modified by syphilitic disease . . . . . . . 37 Hereditary pulmonary tuberculosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Inflammatory pulmonary phthisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 --- Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 965 It will be seen that, of the 842 cases of chronic bronchitis included in the table, the writer classes 283, or a trifle more than 33 per cent., as of rheumatic character. That the relative proportion of acute cases of a distinct rheumatic character is less than those of a chronic grade I have no doubt, and yet their number is not so small as to be insignificant or unworthy of careful attention. [Footnote 5: See _Transactions of American Medical Association_, vol. xxviii. p. 269, 1877.] They differ in clinical history from ordinary acute bronchitis chiefly in the following particulars: Etiologically, a large proportion of them occur in persons of a rheumatic diathesis, either hereditary or acquired, and at those seasons of the year characterized by a predominance of cold and damp air with frequent changes of temperature.