Short answers, pulled from the story.
Bronchitis is inflammation of the bronchi, the large and medium-sized airways in the lungs, and it causes coughing. It usually begins as an infection in the nose, ears, throat, or sinuses that moves down to the bronchi, and it can be acute or chronic.
Acute bronchitis usually involves a cough that lasts around three weeks, and symptoms can last up to six weeks. The underlying infection itself may last only a few days to ten days, with the cough lingering afterward.
Acute bronchitis is a short-term chest cold caused in more than 90% of cases by a viral infection, with a cough lasting around three weeks. Chronic bronchitis is defined as a productive cough that lasts three months or more per year for at least two years and is most commonly caused by tobacco smoking.
Treatment for acute bronchitis usually involves rest, fluids, paracetamol (acetaminophen), and NSAIDs to help with fever. Antibiotics should generally not be used because the cause is almost always viral, except when the bronchitis is due to pertussis.
Smokers, people over 45 years of age, and those who live or work in areas with high air pollution are at higher risk for chronic bronchitis, as are people with asthma. There is still a 4 to 22% chance that non-smokers can develop it, which points to other risk factors such as inhaled fuels, dusts, and fumes.
The British physician Charles Badham was the first to describe the condition and name the acute form acute bronchitis, in his 1808 book Observations on the inflammatory affections of the mucous membrane of the bronchiae. He distinguished three forms of bronchitis, including acute and chronic, and published an expanded second edition in 1814 titled An essay on bronchitis.