The type of breathing to be described first attracted my attention some twenty-five years ago. Subsequently, it was observed with such constancy that I simply assumed it to be well known. A recent review of the literature, however, which included the more recent textbooks, various systematic discussions of lobar pneumonia, and all of the suggestive titles in the second edition of the Surgeon General's Catalogue yielded only two references to the subject. Grocco1 gave a brief description of the phenomenon in 1904. Frugoni,2 his pupil, included it in an extended study of pathologic changes in the respiratory rhythm in 1910.
In 1904, Hughlings Jackson3 reported an isolated case of "latent pneumonia" in which there were no contractions of the intercostal muscles with ordinary breathing. The rate of the respiration was 44 per minute. The intercostals acted, however, when the patient was told sharply, "Breathe!" "There was loss