Cases to illustrate the relationship which exists between wryneck and congenital haematoma of the sterno-mastoid muscle / by D'Arcy Power.

  • Power, D'Arcy, 1855-1941.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cases to illustrate the relationship which exists between wryneck and congenital haematoma of the sterno-mastoid muscle / by D'Arcy Power. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    hand, it is equally incorrect to assert, as do Petersen and Weiss, that congenital torticollis is never caused by direct injury to this muscle. Professor Witzel (34),1 of Bonn, has recently published a paper, TJeber die Entstehung des sogenannten ange- borenen muscularen Schiefhalses, in which with true German industry he traces the different views which have been held as to the cause of congenital wryneck from the time of Alexander the Great—who is said to have had a slight torticollis—up to the present time. In this article he discusses the views held by Dieffen- bach, Stromeyer, Bohn, Petersen, and others, but he can only quote a few isolated instances in which hsematoma of the sterno-mastoid resulted in wryneck, because so few cases have been followed to their termination. In Belgium, Tordeus (29), who has written a paper on the subject of hasmatoma of the sterno-mastoid, has not met with better success. Mr. Bryant (4), in his Lettsomian Lectures in 1863, first drew public attention in England to cases of con- genital tumour of the sterno-mastoid muscle, though isolated cases had previously been recorded by Dr. Wilks (31) and Sir James Paget (18). In 1871, Mr. Thomas Smith (26) read a paper before the Clinical Society of London On the Nature of the so-called Congenital. Tumour of the Sterno-mastoid Muscle. He gave an excellent account of the condi- tion, and quoted two cases. The paper is remarkable because he explained correctly the cause and the patho- logy of the condition, although no post-mortem examina- tion of a similar case was known to him. It is certain that if proper attention had been bestowed on this paper, many children would have escaped a course of grey powder and mercurial inunctions. Mr. Smith makes no allusion to the subsequent occurrence of wryneck. Mr. Henry Arnott (l),in 1874, records eight cases of this 1 The reference numbers relate to the table of Bibliography, pages 150 and 151.
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