A contribution to the surgery of the spinal cord.

  • Thorburn, William, Sir, 1861-1923.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A contribution to the surgery of the spinal cord. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    distinctly hysterical manifestation. It is very common in ordi- nary traumatic neurasthenia to find the urine concentrated, with a deposit of urates, but the reverse condition I have never noticed without other hysterical symptoms. Ovarian hjqoertesthesia, again, is extremely likely to be due to ovarian hypersemia, and a general hypertemia of the genital organs (in the female, at any rate) would explain the flood- ing referred to in Case 56, as well as premature menstruation, which is frequently observed after railway accidents. In several of the above cases will be found references to hsematemesis and melnena, as in Case 53, in which there appears to have been frequent h^matemesis for a year. Meltena generally, and haematemesis often, cannot be traced to fraud, and they might also be explained by vaso-motor changes. I would, however, wish it to be clearly understood that on these vaso-motor symp- toms I now speak with great reserve. The facts of the above cases are correctly recorded, the explanation is most obscure. 5. Pathology. The classical researches of Charcot have established beyond question the practical identity of the symptoms of traumatic hysteria with those which can be produced by suggestion during the hypnotic sleep. In patients hypnotised, not too deeply, it is possible to produce, either by manipulation of the limbs, or by authoritative assertions to the subject of experiment, paralysis and anaesthesia absolutely similar in character to those which have been described above. Hence we are naturally led to seek for an explanation of the traumatic results by a comparison with the fairly well explained manifestations of the hypnotised. For this purpose we require the analogues of the hy]3notic state and of the suggestion. As regards the latter, Charcot has shown that in hypnotised persons, light blows may often produce paralysis and anaesthesia, apart from verbal description to the subject of the results which are to ensue. Hence he postulates the theory of auto-suggestion. A blow causes a sense of congestion or weight in the implicated region, and this would appear to be capable of inducing the idea of paralysis, which is forthwith translated by a disordered cortex into the fact. It is clear, then, that in the hj-puotic condition a slight trauma is capable of evoking by auto-suggestion mani- festations identical with those of hysteria. But further, Charcot