Modern medical opinions on alcohol : being a series of lectures delivered by well-known medical men.
- Date:
- [1911?]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Modern medical opinions on alcohol : being a series of lectures delivered by well-known medical men. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![and worrying over the difficulties of carrying it out; it seemed to be necessary, as it were, to get wound up in order to accomplish anything. They would observe, also, more or less tremor in the lips, the tongue, and the hands, and the great efforts made at self-control in order to per- form small movements in the presence of others; the feeble circulation, the blue extremities, and the breaking out into perspiration very readily. Paralysis. So far, he said, he had been dealing with the signs which any observant person who had had experience of this kind would be able to verify. He would like now to refer to some forms of more definite disease which were often allowed to drag on, and were attributed to other causes. He referred to cases of paralysis of the lower limbs. This form was not so very rare in London, but was more conjimon in many of the large manufacturing towns. A person would be attacked with this particularly painful disorder after a time of prolonged drinking. The patient would become bed-ridden, be racked with pain, worst at night, and would have cramps so severe as to make her wish she were dead. By and bye tlie upper limbs would be attacked, and, strange to say, even for a time after the alcohol had been stopped. The very bad cases sometimes died. Some of them got a little quiet feverishness and mild delirium ; they became thinner and thinner, and contracted a form of consumption. Others died in different ways—from paralysis of the nerves which control the breathing and swallowing; they became unable to cough, and when they swallowed food it went the wrong way, and they choked. These cases, he said, were not to be confounded with the long-standing forms of ])aralysis in aged people w'ith wdiich they were familiar.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28052808_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
