Volume 1

Sajous's analytical cyclopædia of practical medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous and one hundred associate editors.

  • Charles E. de M. Sajous
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sajous's analytical cyclopædia of practical medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous and one hundred associate editors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    placed them. This condition persisted for about nine days, when it was fol¬ lowed by slow improvement. The liver was enlarged in all cases, but were not tender. Cases all recovered. 0. Damsch and A. Kramer (Berliner klin. Woch., Mar. 21, ’98). Opium and anaesthetics have given rise to nervous conditions in which cataleptic phenomena have been prominent. Eu- lenburg, in discussing theory of the mus¬ cular condition in catalepsy, says: “The observation often made, that narcotics and anaesthetics, at a certain stage of their action, before the production of narcotism, may give rise to slight epi¬ leptic phenomena”; then adds in a foot¬ note: “I have myself seen an exquisite case of flexibilitas cerea, alternating with trismus, opisthotonos, and general con¬ vulsions, in a patient poisoned by mor¬ phia (by 0.09 gramme—11/3 grains—of the hydrochlorate)” (“Cyclopaedia of the Pract. of Med.,” Ziemssen, vol. xiv, p. 379). Rosenthal refers to somewhat similar results following the adminstra- tion of anaesthetics and poisonous doses of morphine. In a somewhat ancient American med¬ ical periodical (No. Amer. Med. and Surg. Jour., vol. i, p. 74, ’26) Charles D. Meigs, of Philadelphia, gives an inter¬ esting account of a case of catalepsy produced by opium in a man 27 years of age. The man had taken laudanum. His arms, when in a stuporous condi¬ tion, remained in any posture in which they happened to be left; his head was lifted off the pillow and so remained. “If he were made of wax,” says Meigs, “he could not more steadily preserve any given attitude.” The patient re¬ covered under purging, emetics, and bleeding. C. K. Mills (Pepper’s “Sys¬ tem of Med.,” vol. v, p. 319). Darwin, quoted by Meigs, mentions a case of catalepsy which occurred after the patient had taken mercury. He re¬ covered in a few weeks. [I have often observed a rigid condi¬ tion of the limbs in patients while tak¬ ing an anaesthetic. It is a frequent occurrence under such circumstances, and is seen just before the stage of narcosis is reached. J. T. Eskridge.] It is important to bear in mind that a condition simulating catalepsy, tris¬ mus, and general convulsions may occur from lethal doses of morphine. Such phenomena from the poisonous effects of opium must be exceedingly rare, and are probably indirectly due to the pecul¬ iar nervous organization of the patient. Hypnosis, induced by the Charcot method, such as having the subject stare for eight or ten minutes at a bright ob¬ ject held so as to cause the eyes to look upward in convergence is often attended by cataleptic phenomena: the so-called first stage of hypnosis of Charcot. I have never seen this condition in hyp¬ nosis induced by the Nancy, or suggest¬ ive, method, provided no suggestions were made to develop muscular rigidity. Catalepsy occasionally occurs in asso¬ ciation with insanity. It has been met with in connection with mania, melan¬ cholia, and paralysis of the insane. When it is observed among the insane it is most commonly found in the graver forms of melancholia, and in profound conditions of stupor. The mental con¬ dition under such circumstances is the cause of the cataleptic phenomena. One form of insanity, catatonia, first de¬ scribed by Kahlbaum, of Gorlitz, about twenty-three years ago, is always in its typical form attended by motor tension sufficiently marked to maintain the limbs in whatever position they may be placed for hours, or even a day or more, if we may accept the statements of Kahl¬ baum and Spitzka, Finally, numerous organic diseases of the brain are sufficiently often attended with cataleptic phenomena to demon-