Metaphorically, we speak of the death throes of something in the sense of its final decline , its last moments: for example, "the death throes of the Roman Empire."
Literally, rattle is the longing breath , usually hoarse or hissing, typical of agony and coma, the stifled expiration that many patients present before dying.
Also called rattle is the bubble noise that occurs due to certain diseases of the respiratory system – emphysema, asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia … – due to an obstruction in the airways by a foreign body, and that is only perceived by lung auscultation using a stethoscope.
Precisely the French doctor René Théophile (1781-1828) examined and auscultated a large number of patients with tuberculosis, for which he was able to study and describe the great variety of lung murmurs and the different types of rales and respiratory sounds, and thus he became a true pioneer in the field. It is therefore not surprising that the word comes from the Latin verb “stertĕre”, which means to snore.
