Nervous diseases : their description and treatment / by Allan McLane Hamilton.

  • Allan McLane Hamilton
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nervous diseases : their description and treatment / by Allan McLane Hamilton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    NERVOUS DISEASES. INTRODUCTION^'. HINTS IN REGAED TO METHODS OF EXAMINATION AND STUDY. In beginning our consideration of the diseases which are to form the ■subject of the succeeding pages, it is well to start with systematic rules for investigation, and it is of paramount importance that we should pursue some plan which will enable us to avoid confusion, and assist us in making an accurate diagnosis by exclusion. One of the greatest misfortunes that can happen to the student is the possession of a large accumulation of badly-arranged facts, which are stored away in the brain, like odds and ends in a gan-et. I, therefore, propose a scheme to be used in the exami- nation of patients, and would add a word of caution in regard to the error many of us make in too readily accepting and isolating nervous symptoms as distinct, which, after all, may be expressions of some general disorder. We are to determine the existence and relation of disorders of motility and sensation, as Avell as mental symptoms, defects of speech, sight, or hearing, together with the causes which enter into their production. ExAMiXATiox OF THE Patient Sex, age, temperament, appearance, duration of present disease, existence of complicating maladies, previous history, hereditary predisposition, habits. Symptojiatology—Motility, location of loss or increase (one side or one-half of body?), groups of muscles or single muscles, face, trunk, or extremities, lateral or bilateral, symmetrical or unsymmetrical, loss or exaggeration of electro-muscular contractility, fibrillary contractions, mus- cular power, deformities or contractures; atrophy or hypertro])hy, general or partial; spasms, tonic or clonic, attended or unattended by loss of con- sciousness ; pain ; degree of violence. TuKMOR—Local or general, increased or controlled by will, fine or coarse; time of day, continuous or at intervals; subsidence or continu- ance during pleep. I.vcooRDiNATiox of Upper or lower extremities, variety of action in wliich it occurs ; gait ; aggravation by closure of eyes; loss of muscular ense ; loss of locating power. 2