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In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

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THE

NEW AMERICAN CYCLOPEDIA.

COUGH

COUGH, a violent expiratory movement, excited by some stimulus in the respiratory organs, in which the air is forcibly expelled, carrying with it the mucus or other products accumulated in the air passages. Any irritation from acrid vapors, liquid or solid foreign bodies, too abundant or morbid secretions, or even the action of cold air on the irritated mucous membrane, may produce a cough; the impression is conveyed to the respiratory nervous centre, the medulla oblongata, by the excitor fibres of the par vagum, and the motor impulse is transmitted to the abdominal and other muscles concerned in respiration. Coughing occurs when the source of irritation is in or below the posterior fauces; and sneezing when the irritating cause acts on the nasal mucous membrane. The act of coughing, as defined by physiologists, consists in a long inspiration which fills the lungs; in the closure of the glottis, when the expiratory effort commences; and in the bursting open of the closed glottis by the sudden blast of air forced up from the air passages. The cause of cough may be in the respiratory system, or it may be symptomatic of disease in the digestive and other organs. The cough in laryngitis, croup, and folliculitis arises from irritation in the throat and larynx; in bronchitis, pneumonia, pleurisy, and phthisis, the cause is in the thoracic cavity. Cough may be dry, as in the first stage of pleurisy; or humid, as in certain stages of pneumonia and in advanced consumption; this act may be single, and with distant intervals, or paroxysmal and long continued, as in whooping cough, phthisis, and bronchial catarrh; it may be accompanied by a ringing metallic sound, as in croup and whooping cough, by a hollow resonance or gurgling, as in phthisis with cavities, and by hoarseness, as in laryngeal disease. The character of the cough is characteristic of certain diseases; that of whooping cough and of croup is highly diagnostic; in pleurisy it is dry and hard; in pneumonia, generally humid, with viscid rusty sputa; in consumption it varies with the stage of the affection; but in all these, taken in connection with other symptoms, the cough is a valuable diagnostic sign. Many râles, characteristic of morbid changes, are only or best recognized in the increased respiration after coughing. Cough is frequently accompanied by pain, as in acute

COULOMB

pleurisy, pneumonia, and bronchitis; at other times painless, but exhausting, as in the paroxysms of spasmodic coughs. Cough, symptomatic of other than pulmonary disease, is not accompanied by any characteristic phenomena discoverable by auscultation and percussion. The gravity of cough as a symptom depends on the disease in which it occurs; spasmodic coughs generally are not dangerous, except from the liability to rupture of vessels, or other simply mechanical consequences. For the relief of cough the prescriptions are almost innumerable, consisting of compounds of narcotics, antispasmodics, demulcents, expectorants, and alteratives, according to the character of the symptom, the stage of the disease, and the fancy of the physician.

COULOMB, CHARLES AUGUSTE_DE, a French philosopher, born at Angoulême, June 14, 1786, died in Paris, Aug. 23, 1806. In early life he was sent to the West Indies as an engineer, and remained there employed in the construction of military works 3 years. In 1773 he presented to the academy a memoir on cohesion, and in 1777 won a prize for improvements in the mariner's compass, and in 1781 another for a theory of machines. As a commissary of the government he won great praise from the inhabitants of Brittany for his defence of their interests against the schemes of certain projectors of canals, and was publicly honored with gifts from them. Leaving Paris at the time of the revolution, he devoted himself to the education of his children and the study of electricity. His published memoirs are upon the statical questions of architecture; the mariner's compass; modes of working under water; simple machines and the stiffness of ropes; windmills; the force of torsion; a stationary compass, in which the needle is hung by floss silk; electricity and magnetism, to which he devoted 9 memoirs; the friction of pivots; the circulation of sap in the poplar; the work of day laborers; and the cohesion of fluids. His fame rests principally on his electrical experiments and calculations. For our knowledge of the forces of electricity we are perhaps as much indebted to him as to any one. In private character he was as estimable as in science he was profound, thorough, and exact.

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COUNCIL (Lat. concilium, an assembly for consultation), in ecclesiastical history, an assembly of bishops legitimately convoked, to determine questions concerning the faith, rites, and discipline of the church. Councils are either provincial, national, or general, according as they are composed of the prelates of a province, a nation, or of all Christendom; and their jurisdiction is of corresponding extent. The name is also given to the diocesan synod, called by the bishop for the direction of the spiritual affairs of his diocese. Provincial councils are called and presided over by a metropolitan bishop. Their chief design is to make local disciplinary regulations; and though they may discuss questions of faith, their decisions concerning doctrines have no force unless confirmed by the authority of the Catholic church. The general councils of Basel and Trent enjoined that provincial councils should be held once in 3 years, but in recent times the injunction is often disregarded. In France no metropolitan bishop is permitted to call a council unless by express sanction of the civil power. National councils assemble under the presidency of the primate or of a legate of the holy see; they are composed of all the bishops of a kingdom, and are called by princes for the regulation of national ecclesiastical affairs. These councils were frequent in France under the first 2 lines of French kings. More than 100 bishops were assembled by Napoleon in Paris in 1811, to consider the right claimed by him of nominating bishops and cardinals. As, however, they supported the resistance made by Pope Pius VII. to the imperial designs, they were dismissed before they had passed any decision. Among the latest national councils are that of Presburg, in Hungary, in 1822, and that of Würtzburg, in Bavaria, in 1849.-The general councils, called also cecumenical (from Gr. oikovμevn, the habitable earth), are summoned by the pope, are composed of all the bishops of Christendom, and are designed to adjudge questions of schism and heresy, belief and discipline, which affect the universal church. Though the first 8 general councils were convoked by the Christian emperors, as Constantine, Theodosius, and Justinian, it was because the church did not then extend beyond the limits of the empire, and therefore the Roman emperor had the same right to call a general council which after the division of the empire belonged to the emperor of Germany, and the kings of France, Spain, and England, to call national councils. It is moreover maintained by Roman Catholic writers that the first general councils were summoned by the emperors at the request or with the consent of the popes. Bishops and their representatives alone have a judicative right in councils, though the privilege has often been extended to abbots and the generals of monastic orders. The lower orders of the clergy and the doctors of the church may be invited, and may participate in the deliberations of the assembly, but have only a consultative voice. The cases in which priests and dea

cons have voted (St. Athanasius, for instance, having been but a deacon when he took the leading part in the council of Nice) are exceptional, and thought to be founded on the circumstance that they were the representatives of bishops. The pope, in person or by legates, presides over the council and directs its transactions; the emperors who presided in some early eastern councils having done so only in an executive and protective capacity. The decision is usually according to the majority of the votes cast; but in the council of Constance the 4 nations, Italy, France, Germany, and England, each voted separately. General councils do not create new dogmas, but interpret and declare what was originally contained in Scripture and tradition, and according to Roman Catholic belief are under the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit, and therefore infallible, when they pronounce concerning matters of faith. Their infallibility, however, does not extend to questions of discipline, history, politics, or science, nor even to the grounds of their decision, nor to collateral observations. The disciplinary ordinances are usually termed canons (canones), and the decisions concerning doctrines, dogmas (dogmata); in the council of Trent, on the contrary, the latter were styled canons, and the former distinguished as capita or decreta.-The Roman Catholic church recognizes 19 general councils that of Jerusalem, held by the apostles, about A. D. 50; the 1st of Nice, in Bithynia, convened in 325; the 1st of Constantinople, in 381; the 1st of Ephesus, in 431; that of Chalcedon, in 451; the 2d of Constantinople, in 553; the 3d of Constantinople, in 680; the 2d of Nice, in 787; the 4th of Constantinople, in 869; the 4 councils of Lateran, at Rome, in 1123, 1139, 1179, and 1215; the 1st and 2d of Lyons, in 1245 and 1274; that of Vienne, in Dauphiny, in 1811; that of Constance, in 1414; that of Basel, in 1481 (till its dissolution by the pope); and that of Trent, in 1545. The council of Pisa in 1409, that of Florence in 1439, and the 5th of Lateran in 1512, are also regarded by some as œcumenical. The conference of 192 prelates at Rome in 1854, which proclaimed the dogma of the immaculate conception, was not a council. The Greek church receives as authoritative the decisions of only the first 7 general councils. The Protestant churches generally admit the full authority of none of them, and esteem as œcumenical only the 6 which directly followed the apostolic council of Jerusalem. The synodical assemblies of the Protestant churches, as the councils of La Rochelle and of Dort near the period of the reformation, the general synods of the Evangelical church of Germany, and the convocations of the Anglican church at the present time, cannot in their nature be œcumenical.-The most complete collections of the acts of councils are those of Fathers Labbe and Cossart (Paris, 1671 et seq., 18 vols.), with supplements by St. Baluzius (Paris, 1683 et seq.); Hardouin (Paris, 1715, 12 vols.); Coleti (Venice, 1728 et seq., 23 vols.); Mansi (Florence, 1759-'98,

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