Paralysis and other diseases of the nervous system in childhood and early life.

  • Taylor, James.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Paralysis and other diseases of the nervous system in childhood and early life. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    INTRODUCTION 6 kinds—choreiform, ataxic, athetoid—which are distinctly unusual in adults—except in those in whom the paralysis dates from early life. It must also be remembered that there is a large class of diseases met with in children, the so-called birth- palsies. Under this name are included many varieties of paralysis having the one characteristic in common that they date from birth. Some no doubt arise during intra- uterine life from some condition of unknown nature interfering with the development of cerebral structures. Some probably result from maternal conditions, e.g. detachments of the placenta. Some are probably to be traced somewhat indefinitely to maternal ill health or injury. A certain number also probably arise as a result of injury during a loug and difficult, or at least an abnormal, labour; and the physical condition in these cases may be associated with varying degrees of mental defect. In another large class of cases there seems to be inherited in certain structures a tendency to early decay and death—what Sir William Growers has called abio- trophy. A child is born healthy and develops naturally and normally for months in certain cases, for years in others, and then a gradual process of decay sets in— sometimes in one set of structures, sometimes in another. Thus, in the so-called amaurotic family idiocy, which Waren Tay was the first to describe, a child, apparently healthy, develops naturally for a few months. It then begins to suffer from weakness in all its limbs and it soon becomes blind. It gradually becomes more and more feeble and dies, as a rule, before.it is two years of age. The condition found in the brain is one of almost complete disappearance of all the cerebral cells, but the cause of this remains so far unexplained. In other cases after a lapse of years there develops gradually a spastic condition of limbs, apparently the result of a premature decay of the pyramidal system. Similarly in cases of juvenile general paralysis, we have, as a result apparently of inherited syphilis, degeneration occurring