It's not until after she dies that Scout and Jem get a sense of what's going on behind the drool and venom: Mrs. Dubose is a morphine addict who had vowed to go clean before she died, and enlisted Jem and Scout (without their knowledge) to keep her off the stuff for longer and longer periods of time.
http://lungsounds.net/rales-lung-sounds/ - Rales lung sounds are small rattling noises heard around the lung. This happens when air exposes closed air spaces. Rales can be shown as wet, dry and coarse.
Abnormal breath sounds include: the absence of sound and/or ; the presence of normal sounds in areas where they are normally not heard. For example, bronchial (loud & tubular) breath sounds are abnormal in peripheral areas where only vesicular (soft & rustling) sounds should be heard. When bronchial sounds are heard in areas distant from where they normally occur, the patient may have consolidation (as occurs with pneumonia) or compression of the lung. These conditions cause the lung tissue to be dense. The dense tissue transmits sound from the lung bronchi much more efficiently than through the air-filled alveoli of the normal lung. The term âadventitiousâ breath sounds refers to extra or additional sounds that are heard over normal breath sounds.