Syphilitic affections of the nervous system : and a case of symmetrical muscular atrophy with other contributions to the pathology of the spinal marrow / by Thomas Reade.

  • Reade, Thomas
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Syphilitic affections of the nervous system : and a case of symmetrical muscular atrophy with other contributions to the pathology of the spinal marrow / by Thomas Reade. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    As these three cases last related are fair, and by no means rare or exaggerated, examples of confirmed con- stitutional syphilis settled in the human frame, rendering existence painful and anxious, poisoning life, by de- priving the sufferer of his natural energies of body and mind, it would be useless to multiply cases further of this class. I may say, ^ex tribus disce omnes and in truth you see them in flocks, at once recognised by the facies syphilitica, in all the popular or fashionable sanatory resorts—water cures, Turkish baths, and other more legitimate and recognised agents of restorative action, mineral waters, which attract the sick and the idle. Case VITI.—Syphilitic Meningitis of the Spinal Marrow. The surgeon of a regiment quartered in Belfast came to me, accompanied by an officer of his regiment, whom he felt anxious about, on account of a regular but pro- gressive loss of sensation in the abdominal walls; it was now spreading down the thighs, accompanied by dimi- nished power of the lower limbs in walking, with weak- ness of the knees—in short, he and the patient both feared an ultimate development of paraplegia. This gentleman, who, except that he was pallid, had other- wise no mark of disordered health, had been for more than eighteen months under the care of an hospital surgeon of Dublin, who successively treated him for primary ulcer, for secondary symptoms, and latterly for tertiary symptoms. He was at that time taking the hydriodate of potash, 5 grs, three times a day. 1 was so convinced that this was a case in its essence identical 3
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