Sciatica : a record of clinical observations on the causes, nature, and treatment of sixty-eight cases / by A. Symons Eccles.

  • Eccles, A. Symons.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sciatica : a record of clinical observations on the causes, nature, and treatment of sixty-eight cases / by A. Symons Eccles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    Any pain about the buttocks, thighs, and legs is described by the majority of lay sufferers as sciatica, and the possibility of any disease in another locality giving rise to such pain has been ignored in a few cases which have come under the author's notice in patients who had undergone treatment for sciatica by ignorant persons, when a careful examination would have disclosed the exist- ence of grave spinal lesion or pelvic disease. For this reason, in all cases of long-continued severe pain along the course of the great sciatic nerve or in the gluteal region, it is necessary not only to examine the affected limb and to compare it with its fellow of the opposite side, but the reflexes must be tested, and the general condition of the limb should be observed in regard to posture, muscular atrophy, assthesia, temperature, and the presence or absence of any localized swelling. In all the severer cases, even when the existence of the characteristic symptoms of sciatic neuritis leaves no doubt as to the affection of the nerve itself, it is unsafe to omit the precaution of examining the rectum, for, should no visceral disease or pelvic new growth be discovered, rectal exploration will often reveal the presence of scy- bala, to whose presence and pressure upon the sacral plexus the sciatic pain is due.