Five essays / By John Kearsley Mitchell ... Ed. by S. Weir Mitchell.

  • John Kearsley Mitchell
Date:
1859
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Five essays / By John Kearsley Mitchell ... Ed. by S. Weir Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

    376/388 page 366
    [The following observations, which seem required to complete the subject, are extracted from a second paper upon the same subject.—Ed.] In reviewing the thirty-five cases now presented to the readers of the Journal, several general truths seem worthy of particular notice. Among these not the least important is the bearing on the question of 'pathological seat. The first case, in conjunction with the cases of rheumatism produced by carious spine, reported in my first paper on this subject, leaves no doubt in my mind that a condition of parts, exactly the same as in rheu- matism, may and does exist as an effect of irritation of the great nervous masses at the centre. It remains to be proved by the opponents of this system, by equally conclusive facts, that a genuine translatable rheumatism is ever found to be independent of such a cause, or that the disease properly called rheumatism is ever a primary affection of the limbs or joints. The extraordinary fa- cility with which most of the recited cases were cured by exclusive spinal treatment goes far to establish con- currently the same truth. Eor when a true inflamma- tion of a joint has a purely local character, as in Case XXXIII., the spinal treatment is altogether useless, while the more direct application of the same means meets with prompt success. If inflammation alone of the tissues ordinarily attacked by rheumatism constituted that disease, inflammation from a sprain or blow affect- ing the same parts should have the same translatable character, which is so characteristic of true rheumatic inflammation, and should also be capable of passing not only to similar parts, but to the viscera., as not unfre- quently happens in rheumatic cases.
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