On tic douloureux, or neuralgia, together with a few cursory remarks on intermittent fever, and its supposed connexion with the former / by James Heygate.
- Date:
- 1836
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On tic douloureux, or neuralgia, together with a few cursory remarks on intermittent fever, and its supposed connexion with the former / by James Heygate. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![especially tlie lilaiiients of that branch of tlie fifth pair, which come out at the infra-orbitary foramen ; also the fifth pah*, though lili;e the spinal nerves per- forming a double office, that of motion and sensation, may be considered essentially the organ of sensation to the sides of the head and face; and so agonizing sometimes are the paroxysms of pain, that patients, vith the hope of cure, have submitted to a division of the infi*a-orbitary branch. This operation has, in some few instances, been for a time successful, but I should, generally speaking, much doubt its exj)ediency; for, in the first place, the cause is mostly beyond the reach of the knife; and, secondly, if you destroy the communication in one branch, it may concentrate its vumlent power in some contiguous twigs, thereby merely diverting the pain ft*om one channel to another. This, also, ought to be more strongly unpressed upon our minds, when we bear in recollection, that two violently diseased actions ai*e seldom in force at the same time ; that the one, as it were, seems to coun- teract the effect of the other. On this subject, Mr Abernethy says, “ Some per- sons have been led to divide the nerves of the pai*t, but I say you might as well expect to cure a man with gout, of the x>aiu in his great toe, by dividing the nerves going to the toe, as to cure a person of Tic Douloureux, by a division of the nerve. In both cases, the complaint is perfectly coustitutioua].” Now, al-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21957216_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
