Hysteria : the history of a disease / by Ilza Veith.

  • Ilza Veith
Date:
1970, ©1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hysteria : the history of a disease / by Ilza Veith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    76/128 (page 70)
    ralgla and Hysteria, for both may have a constitutional origin, and be amenable to nearly the same treatment. In neuralgia, we have a more generally local and more persistent affection of a nerve. The disease appears to be limited to the nerve itself, the course of which may be traced by the pain, which is often excessive ; whereas in those cases of Hysteria m.arked by local pain, the pain is general, involv- ing the structures around, in common with real disease of the part affected. In neuralgia the disease is placed on a recognized nerve, and a person is said to have neuralgia of a given nerve, such as the frontal, mental, or digital. In Hysteria any locality may be affected without reference to the distribution of nerves ; while epilepsy is characterized by well marked symptoms clearly of a cerebral origin. If you amputate a limb for hysteric pain, you throw the disease back on its nervous centre, and you kill your patient. In the early part of my hospital career I have seen this fact more than once exemplified. In such cases operative sur- gery is entirely out of place. Now, before I proceed to illustrate these statements by reference to cases, of which I have a sufficient supply, I wish to make a few remarks on the relation between local Hysteria and the nervous centres, namely, the brain and spinal cord. Any facts that tend to throw even a gleam of light on the connection between them must be interesting. I refer to the influence of an2esthetic agents, especially of opium and chloroform. In cases of Hysteria marked by local pain, relief is given by the application of opium to the affected partj a fact which does not confirm the