Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On masturbation and hysteria in young children. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![for days, and amount to sncli agony in some instances, that the suspicion of cerebral disease was aroused. In a fe\Y cases the suppression of masturbation was the pi-incipal promoter of re- covery^ In otliers medicinal treatment proved effective, where the bad habit had resulted in a thorough lowering of the sub- stance aud function of the nerves. Iron administered for a long period, together with a roborant diet, belladonna in frequent and small doses, uitrite of amyl (inhaled during the attacks, as in the spastic hemicrania of adults; not internally, where I have found it absolutely inert) and protracted application of a mild galvanic current will prove successful. I should not leave this subject, however, without mentioning the effect of strychnia in speedily restoring the impaired nerve power, provided the doses are not too small, and the mode of administration the appro- priate one. A child of five years ought not to take less than -jijth jiart of a grain in the course of a day, of either the su]j)hate or nitrate. Larger doses are frequently not only tolerated, but required. The best mode of its administration, however, is not by the mouth, but subcutaneous. A single daily dose of a twen- tieth part of a grain of the sulphate of strychnia in water will fully suffice. Its beneficial effect upon the nerve-centres explains its power over the other form of neurosis not infrequently found in children— spinal irritation, a term which for thirty years had an ontological existence in our vocabulary. After it had been given a Ijona-fide place amongst elementary ailments, modern medicine has ceased to look upon it as a unit. There are cases in which it is found to be due to a simple irradi- ation from cardialgia, others in which it depends on con- tagious and miasmatic diseases, typhoid and intermittent fevers; or on dyscrasic conditions, such as tuberculosis or scurvy ; or on deficient sanguification, from anajniia, hydraamia, for smallness of arteries; or on venous obstruction superin- duced by diseases of the lungs, heart, or abdomen, or on congestion of the spinal cord and surroundings depending upon improper innervation; or on antemia of the spinal cord; or on a neuralgia of the skin, or muscle, or bones, or meninges. It is evident, from the long list of causes, that the cases of spinal irritation must be )nore freqnent in the adult than in the young. But in these, this form of ueuralgia](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2101890x_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
