The Chinese Puffhard excelled herself, and though she choked asthmatically did not really stop once until we were half way up the drive, when I abandoned her to the gardeners, who later on harnessed the donkey to her and pulled her into the motor-house.
1864, John Hanning Speke, The Discovery of the Source of the Nile:
He was not an old man, though he affected to be so--walking very slowly and deliberately, coughing asthmatically, glimmering with his eyes, and mumbling like a witch.