Essays on hysteria, brain-tumor, and some other cases of nervous disease.

  • Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 1842-1906.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on hysteria, brain-tumor, and some other cases of nervous disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    under the tense fold of the tentorium ; it is least likely to occur when room is left for the expansion of the growth at the interpeduncular space. In the pons and medulla, direct irritation of the trigeminus may add a special liability to pain. The great liability to headache with tumors of the corpora quadrigemina may perhaps be due to their intimate connections with the cerebellum. In the cortex, only half the cases were attended by headache ; this probably being due to the tendency of the tumor to grow downward, and thus to relieve the tension of the dura. The periodicity in the pain is undoubtedly associated with fluctuations of the circulation, always liable to be diurnally periodic. An initial headache often disappears when paralysis sets in ; probably because, by that time, a zone of softening has usually developed around the tumor. The intensity of the pressure is at first either partially or entirely relieved ; headache may set in, if the tumor suddenly assume a more rapid rate of growth; it necessarily subsides at the appearance of the terminal symptoms of drowsiness and comatose apathy ; the pain being blunted, like other signs of irritation, in the general depression of the sensibility. Vertigo is a prominent symptom of any organic brain disease, and although frequently present with tumor, is far from characteristic of it. It is probably always associated with direct or indirect irritation of those portions of the brain which are concerned in equilibration ; and it agrees well with this presump- tion that vertigo so much more frequently occurs with tumors of the cerebellum than with those of other parts of the brain. Other space-encroaching le- sions, e. g, abscesses, so situated as to affect the middle or internal ear, may cause vertigo by the same