Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble it / by Francis E. Anstie.

  • Francis E. Anstie
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble it / by Francis E. Anstie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    palmar surface of the fing-ers, or tlie dorsum of tlie foot; rarely on the sole of the foot or the back of the hand. It is very- interesting to remark that these skin lesions correspond very nearly_, not only to those observed in the cases of nerve injury reported by ]\tr. Paget ^, in which actual neuralgia was present (though the kind of pain is not exactly specified), but also very nearly with the nutritive changes observed by Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson in a number of cases of surgical injuries of nerves ^. The tendency of neuralgic pain accompanied by nutritive lesions of the skin and nails to seat itself in the hands and feet will be hereafter noted in connection with the subject of the pains of locomotor ataxy and of those produced by profound mercurial poisoning. And it will be seen, in the section on Pathology, that very important conclusions are suggested by the coincidence. Joined with the burning pains^ and the altered skin nutrition, in the cases of gun-shot injury of nerves which we are consider- ing, there is nearly always a marked alteration in the tempera- ture of the parts, either in one direction or the other. In the great majority of instances of ordinary neuralgia after wounds this alteration is a very considerable reduction of the temperature of the parts supplied by the painful nerves ; a change which cor- responds with what appears in the vast majority of all cases of division of sensitive nerves, whether pain be set up or not. But in all examples of the hurning pain after injury, Messrs. Mitchell, Morehouse, and Keen found the temperature of the painful parts notably elevated. It would appear that there is no form of neuralgia more dreadful, and scarcely any so hopeless, as this burning pain coming on as a sequel to severe nerve injuries. It exercises a profoundly depressing effect upon the whole nervous tone; the most robust men become timid and broken down, and their con- dition is compared by the American writers to that of hysterical women. There is another peculiar nutritive affection, first recognised as an occasional consequence of nerve injuries by Messrs. Mitchell, Morehouse, and Keen, namely, an inflammation of joints, and although we have no concern here with this symptom, it will ' ' Med. Times and Gazette/ March 26, 1864. ^ 'London Hosp. Reports,' 1S66. C
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