Clinical notes on nerve disorders in surgical practice / by George Wherry.

  • Wherry, George, 1852-1928.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical notes on nerve disorders in surgical practice / by George Wherry. 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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    nervous forms of stammering and stutter-spasm, it is one of those tilings from which females are more free than males. When some years ago there was a scare of small-pox, and many students of both sexes were vaccinated, it was quite curious to note the number of men who fainted under the operation or on witnessing it. If a lady witnessing the perform- ance felt queer she went out and recovered, but a man was rarely got at in time to do more than spread him on the floor for recovery. In these remarks I entirely leave out the exciting influence of drink. Shock and the reaction when accidents occur may be much emphasised, or jDerhaps lightened, and it will explain sometimes the odd things done by a man’s friends. To give an example. At about one o’clock in the morning I went to see an undergraduate who had cut his hand badly. I found a number of young fellows who had evidently dined ; they were all massed together, the wounded hand being held towards me in such a fashion that I was obviously intended to dress the wound without seeing even a portion of the body of my patient. This was all arranged with more gravity than I can describe, and was explained by the desire to conceal the identity of the sufferer and the results of an after-dinner dance which had ended in a fall and a bad cut with broken glass. On another occasion after a “ wine,” two men who quarrelled were fitted by the more sober of the party with boxing gloves under the idea that they could not so hurt one another ; but a struggle on the floor resulted in one of the combatants being carried to bed profoundly unconscious and cyanotic. The panic which ensued in the company was partly made by the fear of discovery by the “ dons ” of the college. But it is not always the ordinary orgy that one has to deal with. One night I was called out to visit college rooms in which a strange thing had happened. Three men had obtained from the East a quantity of haschish, a form of Indian hemp, of which powerful drug they had arranged together to partake each his allotted portion; meanwhile note-takers and witnesses of the performance were arranged to record the doings and sayings of those under the influence of the excitement of the poison. When I arrived two out of the three were thoroughly and