Account of a singular effect produced by acupuncture in a case of protracted lock-jaw / [William Seller].

  • William Seller
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Account of a singular effect produced by acupuncture in a case of protracted lock-jaw / [William Seller]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    At that time the acupuncture had reached the height of its reputation on the Continent, and had begun to attract a good deal of attention in this country. One case of hysteric lock-jaw had been reported as successfully treated by it.* In that case, reported by Carraro, the disease was of no more than two days’ standing ; two deep acupuncturations were made in the masseter muscles, and in three minutes the spasm of the jaw ceased.I Although the case which I had to treat was unequivocally connected with hysteria, there was reason to think, from the inflammatory symptoms with which the disease originally set in, from the pain, swelling, and redness in the regions of the mas¬ seter and temporal muscles, present in a greater or less degree from the beginning, and from the relief obtained in the first in¬ stance by antiphlogistic treatment, that the affection was not purely spasmodic, but was kept up by a rigidity of the muscles closing the jaw, produced by previous inflammation, in con¬ sequence of which the antagonist muscles, under the mere in¬ fluence of volition, had become inadequate to the effort of open¬ ing the mouth. I admit the probability of protracted forms of lock-jaw in females partaking in general of the same character with the long-continued contraction of such joints as the knee- joint, justly acknowledged to belong to hysteria, in which the acupuncturation of the affected muscles has been more recently practised with success yet the distinctness of the inflammatory symptoms in the case in question appeared a sufficient warrant for regarding it as allied to the sort of affections referred by Sauvages to trismus inflammatorius, and described by J. C. G. Ackermann as rheumatic trismus. It was this view of the case which made me consider it more reasonable, in making trial of the needles, to insert them into the muscles which open the jaw, in the expectation of ex¬ citing these to such a contraction as might overcome the rigidity of their antagonists. My intention was, as a first experiment, to introduce two needles, one on each side of the mesial line, between the chin and the hyoid bone ; but as the patient showed signs of alarm at the place chosen, the first needle was inserted close to the anterior border of the sterno-mastoid muscle, im¬ mediately behind the ramus of the jaw, as near as I could judge to the course of the digastric muscle. The needle had not penetrated much beyond the integuments, when to my surprise (for I had not great faith in the remedy), the teeth began to grate on each other, and the jaw to be drawn forcibly, by short convulsive efforts, to the side where the needle was inserted. I made haste to introduce another needle into the corresponding * See Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xxvii. p. 343. f Annali Universal! di Medicina, Luglio, 1025, p. 65. f Wilson, London IMedico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. xxi. p. I07.
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