Hysteria : remote causes of disease in general. Treatment of disease by tonic agency. Local or sugical forms of hysteria, etc. / Six lectures, delivered to the students of St. Bartholomew's hospital, 1866, by F. C. Skey.

  • Skey, Frederic C. (Frederic Carpenter), 1798-1872.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hysteria : remote causes of disease in general. Treatment of disease by tonic agency. Local or sugical forms of hysteria, etc. / Six lectures, delivered to the students of St. Bartholomew's hospital, 1866, by F. C. Skey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    novel excitement she stood up, and, to the astonishment of her family, she danced the whole evening, having almost suddenly recovered the healthy muscular actions of the limb ! She came to see me two days afterward. She walked perfectly well into my room, and paced the room backward and forward with great delight. The actions of the limb were thoroughly restored, and all trace of the previous malady had disappeared. These cases, which you will meet with hereafter, show that under a morbid condition of the nerves or nervous system of a given part of the body the muscles supplied by them may become the subject of hysteric contraction or spasm, which can only be treated effectually through the constitution, whether the disease has sprung from the ner- vous centre or has originated in the nerve itself, either in its course or in its distribution in the muscle. Where a single muscle is involved, or, still more, a portion of a muscle, as in the case of permanent contraction of one finger, one can scarcely explain the fact on the supposition that the disease extends so far back as the spinal cord, and which can impli- cate one filament of the nerve only and leave the rest unaf- fected. Still the probability of its seat in the cord is strengthened by the evidence of cases in which the nervous system of a considerable part of the body is involved, as in cases of hemiplegia or general paralysis, and of such I have seen several examples. Their true diagnosis will only be obtained on the most careful investigation. Hysteric paraplegia may sound strange in your ears, but if you will study hysteric diseases you will find no difficulty in the con- clusion that Hysteria, as Dr. Sydenham says, may attack