Clinical observations on functional nervous disorders / by C. Handfield Jones.

  • Charles Handfield Jones
Date:
1867
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical observations on functional nervous disorders / by C. Handfield Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    very painful. While the limb was in this state, one morning he found that he saw double, and had a squint in the left eye. At the Ophthalmic Hospital, it was found that the external rectus muscle was completely paralyzed, and he had circuraorbital pain. It was supposed that there was periosteal inflammation about the orbit, and pot. iodid. was given; the whitlow was poulticed, and the arm fomented. After a month of this treatment, there was no improve- ment of the eye, but the arm inflammation had quite subsided. A piece of dead bone was now removed from the seat of the whitlow; soon after which the squint disappeared, as well as the pain in the arm and about the orbit. The external rectus had quite recovered its power. In this instance, pain in sensory nerves about the orbit and paralysis of a single motor nerve were co-results of the morbid impression conveyed from the diseased finger to the centre. Dr. Watson refers to the production of amaurosis without visible change in the eye, in consequence, apparently, of irritation of the dental nerves, the blindness ceasing after the extraction of some teeth which had grown irregularly.^ He quotes from Mr. Lawrence an interesting case, in which the extraction of a carious tooth, with a splinter of wood projecting from one of its fangs, procured the restoration of the sight of the eye of the same side, which had been entirely lost for thirteen months. In such cases, the paralysis of the retina or of the optic tubercles may fairly be designated inhibi- tory. Two cases of amaurosis and one of ptosis are recorded by Mr. Hancock^ as cured by the removal of decayed or overcrowded teeth. ]Mr. Fleischmann^ gives a case in which an obstinate muco-purulent discharge from the right nostril, which had resisted other treatments, yielded to extraction of the right upper canine. Plucking the large vibrissa at the entrance of the nostrils will, at least in some persons, cause a notable secretion of mucus, evidently dependent on the pain excited. Some while ago, I had a gentleman under my care with acute rosacea of the face and head, and chronic corneitis, with vascular development on the cornea. I applied on one occasion some liq. plumbi diacet., diluted with an equal amount of water, to the upper lids (everted), which I found very red. This caused ex- cessive irritation; the eyes became greatly congested, watered, extremely, and were very painful; while the skin of the face, the nose especially, became of a deep red, and all the vessels of the face much congested. There was extreme photophobia. It was half an hour before the hypersemia began to subside. The irrita- tion in this case evidently was reflected from the branches of the first division of the fifth nerve supplying the lids, on to the vaso- motor nerves of the arteries, supplying the skin of the face, which, in consequence of the morbid impression, became dilated—not con- tracted, as they normally should, according to the law of reflex ' Watson's Lectures, voL i. p. 336. 2 Lancet, January 22, 1859. 3 British Medical Journal, April 9, 1859.
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