Volume 1

An essay on hydrocephalus acutus, or dropsy in the brain / [John Cheyne].

  • Cheyne, John, 1777-1836
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on hydrocephalus acutus, or dropsy in the brain / [John Cheyne]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    other infantine complaint have I been struck . with the knitting of the eyebrows, unaccom- panied by crying. ‘The disease certainly wants, in these cases, much of the decided character which it assumes in childhood and youth; but, even in infancy, I believe Hydrocephalus may in general be early detected by the attentive ‘observer. I have, on two different occasions, been call- ed to children not a year old in convulsions, both of whom died in a few days of Hydroce- phalus. To their mothers they had not ap- peared materially ill before the fits seized them. One of them, for several nights, had had fre- quent spasms of the glottis, very short, but threatening suffocation, the child crowing, and becoming purple, but immediately recovering. Both children had Hydrocephalic stools. It is always desirable to know whence the convul- sions arise, and perhaps the following distinc- tion will be found useful. When convulsions arise from Hydrocephalus, generally one side is more aflected than the other, one arm or foot being with some regularity retracted and flung out again, while the other is palsied, or perhaps spasmodically retracted ; the eyes are suffused ; there is often a circumscribed deep blush on the cheek ; and the breathing is slow and irregular; sometimes, however, it is con- yulsive, Whereas, in convulsions not. radi-