Volume 1

Glasgow hospital reports / edited for the committee by George S. Middleton [and others].

Date:
1898-1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Glasgow hospital reports / edited for the committee by George S. Middleton [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    extremities disappeared, while the paralysis of the side of the face was considerably modified. At the time of her dismissal she was in the most perfect health, the only symptoms remain- ing being partial paralysis of the portio dura nerve.1 Finally, it must be admitted that the rapid disappearance of the paralytic symptoms suggests the possibility of the symptoms being dependent upon an inflammatory lesion at the base of the brain. CASE 2. TUMOUR OF THE MEDULLA OBLONGATA. On the 4th June, 1881, a student of divinity, aged thirty- seven, was admitted into the side-room of Ward II. with a very unusual train of symptoms, the cause of which it will now be my endeavour to elucidate. One morning, about three years ago, on wakening, he observed that he had a left internal squint: slight at first, it gradually became more pronounced, so that, at a distance of fifteen feet, images appeared one yard apart, but in about four or five months it in great measure dis- appeared, unless after a bad night’s rest. Shortly after this he had for a time some confusion of ideas, and very slight pain in the back of the head and upper part of the spine, which was followed in a few months by drowsiness, to such an extent that he was constantly falling asleep; this drowsiness gradually deepened into a sort of stupor, from which he was aroused with some difficulty. This symptom, too, about the same time to a 1 Dr. Thomas Reid examined the eyes of this patient with the ophthalmo- scope, and with the following result. There was hypermetropia (one twentieth) in both, and in both thinning of the choroid. The vision of the left was reduced one-half, but there was no special defect in any region of the field of vision. The papillae in both were oval-shaped, and the vessels were accom- panied in both by white streaks. The upper and inner aspect of the left disc was slightly cupped, and occupied by a network of cicatricial tissue continuous with the white streaks accompanying the vessels. Dr. Reid thought that the symmetrical character of the abnormal shape of the discs pointed to congenital or local, rather than intracranial causes. The intraocular changes, viewed by themselves, might be accounted for by the hypermetropia ; but, in the light of the other symptoms, it was also possible that they were due to some general cause, syphilitic or other.