On spasm, languor, palsy, and other disorders, termed nervous, of the muscular system / by James Arthur Wilson.

Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On spasm, languor, palsy, and other disorders, termed nervous, of the muscular system / by James Arthur Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    immediately connected with the damaged portion of the central nervous structure. The spasms incidental to tumours of the brain, and to the apoplectic fit, are, for the most part, of this kind. In a case which I attended, with Mr. Laisne, of Eaton Square, in November, 1835, and which ended fatally in twelve hours from the attack, the muscles of the left side of the body were strongly convulsed by spasm, recurring in fits, while the right side remained entirely without motion. On an examination of the brain after death, the left corpus striatum was found to be completely disorganised by blood effused into its substance; the opposite side of the brain was sound in structure. The subject of this case was a distinguished naval officer, about fifty years of age. He had long pre- viously suffered from headache, with other symptoms of disturbed health, and was at last struck down by apoplexy while he was shaving, so suddenly that he fell beneath the dressing-table with the razor in his hand. It remains a question in these cases of spasmodic apoplexy, whether the forced contraction of the muscles be induced by a direct effect of pressure or displacement of the sound portions of the brain, with which those organs, through their nerves, are con- nected. In the purely epileptic paroxysm, (and the spasm of apoplexy is in its character epileptic,) the temporary disturbance of the circulation in the brain, upon which the irregular action of the muscles seems to depend, is in most cases an effect from causes directly affecting the general current of the blood in its volume and composition.