Copy 1, Volume 2

The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good].

  • John Mason Good
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    668/724 (page 658)
    Gen. XII. Spec. I. a A. acuta artuum. Local varie- ties of acute rheu- matism. BA. acuta lumborum. y A. acuta coxendicis. 3 A. acuta thoracis. [When a trial of bark is judged proper, the sulphate of quinine is a convenient preparation, that should not be forgotten. Indeed, it has already been recommended by Dr. Whiting * and others. ] The above remarks will apply to the other varieties of acute rheumatism as well as to the first, that which affects the joints generally, and is the most common form under which the disease shows itself; yet the few following observations, more immediately directed to the other va- rieties, may not be altogether unprofitable. LumMBaAGo has sometimes been confounded with ne- phritis, or a calculus in the kidneys or ureters; but the proper nephritic affections are distinguished by some irre- gularity in the secretion of urine, and, as we have already had occasion to observe, with a numbness shooting down the thigh, and a retraction of either testicle. RHEUMATISM OF THE, HIP-JOINT was called among the Latins ischias, from isxyios, the Greek term for hip; which was afterwards corrupted into isciatica or sciatica ; a word that has occasionally found its way into the dra- matic poetry of our own country, as in Shakspeare’s Timon, —The cold scIATICA Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt As lamely as their manners. This variety, at its onset, has sometimes been mistaken for a phlegmonous inflammation of the psoas muscle. But in the latter there is, from the first, less tenderness to the touch, but much more enlargement, and the pain shoots higher into the loins. In sciatica, indeed, the whole limb, instead of continuing to swell, soon wastes away, and the emaciation extends to the nates of the affected side, so that the muscles have neither strength nor substance ; while the thigh seems elongated. When ACUTE RHEUMATIsM attacks the PLEURA, or any of its duplicatures or appendages, it exhibits many of the symptoms of pleurisy or peripneumony. But here, also, as in every other case of rheumatism, we have much greater tenderness upon pressure than in phlogotic inflam- * See Lond. Med. Physical Journ. Feb. 1826.