Case of marked improvement in general paralysis with remarks on treatment / by Alexander Robertson.

  • Robertson, Alexander
Date:
[1893?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of marked improvement in general paralysis with remarks on treatment / by Alexander Robertson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    palpable and enormous, that it is impossible, within the limits of an address of this character, to do more than refer to the most outstanding and remarkable—and the ground I have already traversed will probably suffice to give you some idea of the country beyond. To trace philosophically and fully all the circumstances which have led up to and produced the changes herein described, would necessitate a discussion of the growth of our knowledge of physiology and pathology, and it would be difficult to be sure whither such discussion would lead us, and where it would end. My purpose has been fully served if I have convinced you that, with regard to surgery as with every true science and art, the words of Tennyson may be applied in all their fulness— <l Yet I doubt not, through the ages one unceasing 'purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.” CASE OF MARKED IMPROVEMENT IN GENERAL PARALYSIS, WITH REMARKS ON TREATMENT. By ALEXANDER ROBERTSON, M.D., F.F.P.S.G., Physician to the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow. The hopeless feeling that arises in the mind in regard to the future of his patient when the symptoms clearly indicate the presence of general paralysis is only too well known to the experienced practitioner of medicine. Nor will he readily admit that improvement, though it may occur after treatment, is dependent on it, for he knows that temporary lulls in this dread disease of mind and body are by no means rare. Being fully aware of this fact, it is only a thorough conviction that the arrest of the malady for a considerable period was depen- dent on the treatment adopted which has led me to put the following case on record :— A. W. J., age 45, sailor, married, admitted into Royal Infirmary on 24th October, 1891. Patient’s father died of cancer of the brain ; mother lived to a good old age. He has four of a family, all of whom are living, and his wife has had no miscarriages. Until his present illness he was a healthy man, was temperate in alcohol, and denies having had syphilis. His wife first noticed that he was distinctly ill about nine
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