Pathological and practical researches on diseases of the brain and the spinal cord / By John Abercrombie.

  • John Abercrombie
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pathological and practical researches on diseases of the brain and the spinal cord / By John Abercrombie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    448/488 page 424
    stimuli, while the smell was little impaired. In the same manner, there may be loss of sensation in any limited part, from disease or injury of a particular branch of the 5th, as in a striking case mentioned by Sir Charles Bell. A gentleman, after having a grinder very awkwardly extracted from the lower jaw, on put- ting a tumbler to his lips, to rinse his mouth, exclaim- ed, “ You have given me a broken glass.” He had lost entirely the sensation of half the lip, from destruction of the branch of the 5th which passes along the lower jaw, and the affection was permanent. The motion of the parts, depending on the portio dura of the 7th, of course was unimpaired.* A remarkable circumstance connected with the af- fections of the 5th nerve, is the tendency to inflamma- tion and slovghing in parts which have lost their sensi- bility,—particularly in the eye. A very instructive case of this kind occurred to my friend Dr. Alison. The patient had loss of common sensation on the left side of the face, the left nostril, and left side of the tongue, with insensibility of the ball of the eye, and occasional bloody discharge from the left nostril; and was liable to attacks of pain occasionally accompanied with fever, during which the pain was chiefly referred to the in- sensible parts. There were frequently attacks of inflam- mation of the left eye, with dimness of the cornea, which were relieved from time to time by the usual an- tiphlogistic means ; but at the end of two months, a line formed round the base of the cornea, which at length sloughed out, and the contents of the eye were entirely discharged. ‘The muscles of the left side of the jaw were paralytic, and felt quite flaccid when the patient chewed or clenched the jaws, but the motion of the muscles of the cheek was unimpaired. After the de- struction of the eye, the paralytic symptoms remained stationary for a year or more ; there was then a violent return of headach with fever, and death in a state of * Sir Charles Bell’s yl pab as reported in the Medical Gazette, vol. i.
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