Studies on functional nervous disorders.

  • Jones, C. Handfield (Charles Handfield), 1819-1890.
Date:
1870
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Studies on functional nervous disorders. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    that not a word could be understood, and there was squinting. This condition lasted for nearly two days and then disappeared. At first she was in a cold perspiration, but with remedies she got warm, and became very feverish and thirsty, and quite delirious on the night of the day she was taken ill, and also on the day following. She had been suckling eight months ; had no milk at last. On admission her pulse was 112, very weak. Temperature, i04°.3. There was extensive consolidation of the left lung, which did not begin to resolve tiR about the twenty- eighth day, and reabsorption was not complete till the forty-second. She was thin and weakly. In this interesting case the nerve disorder which so commonly attends on the commencement of pneumonia,, assumed unusually large proportions^ no doubt in consequence of the enfeebled resisting power of the system. There were clonic convulsions (rigors), paralysis, as marked by the hemiplegia, aphonia, and squinting, and delirium. However it may have been with the rigors, there can be no doubt that the paralysis and delirium existed after fever, and consequently free circulation had set in, so that we cannot attribute these phenomena to aneemiating vascular spasm. In other instances, moreover, the onset of pneumonia has been attended with very great prostration of nervous power, or with severe giddiness, which can hardly be referred to anything else than direct disorder of the nerve-tissue itself. Such, I believe, was the case here, and the case seems to me of special interest, as illustrating the concurrence of different modes of morbid action in the same system. 'No doubt the locality affected had much to do with the diversity of the phe- nomena, the rigors we may attribute to disorder of the cord, the squinting and aphonia to paralysis of the nuclei of the hypoglossal and sixth nerves, the hemiplegia to a like state of the corpus stria- tum, while the delirium, of course, must have had its seat in de- ranged action of the hemispheres. Nevertheless, as all these disorders occurred under the same circumstances it seems tolerably clear that there is an af&nity and hkeness between them, which is quite confirmed by prior experience. (XYI) In a previous section we have seen how paralysis of vaso- motor nerves gives rise to dilatation of arteries, to augmented heat of blood, and to increased vital activity of the tissues, the latter, however, sometimes becoming exhausted, and replaced by more or less destructive inflammation. It seems probable enough that the capillaries cannot remain unaffected by all this change which is going on within and around them. That their structureless wall is not a