Electro-galvanic symptoms, and electro-magnetic remedies, in chronic diseases of the class hypertrophy, or chronic enlargements of the organs and limbs, including all forms of scrofula, with illustrative diagrams and cases / by H.H. Sherwood.

  • Sherwood, H. H. (Henry Hall)
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Electro-galvanic symptoms, and electro-magnetic remedies, in chronic diseases of the class hypertrophy, or chronic enlargements of the organs and limbs, including all forms of scrofula, with illustrative diagrams and cases / by H.H. Sherwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    44/90
    CHAPTER XIV. THEORIES OF THE SCHOOLS, SPINAL NEURALGIA, OR NERVOUS AFFECTION OF THE SPINE, SPINAL IRRITATION, &c. Physicians have of late year? been taught to examine the spine of their patients, affected with chronic disease?, after they have ex- hausted the prolific remedies in the pharmacopieas ; and if they find one part of the spine more tender than another, to call the dis- ease spinal neuralgia, and apply their remedies to the spine. These remedies are cupping, leeching, blistering, issues, moxa, setons, &c. &c. When, therefore, they lose all confiience in being able to succeed in curing such patients with the common remedies, these are applied. The common symptoms of these chronic diseases of the organs are so vague and uncertain as to make a change of opinion, in re- gard to the seat of the disease, a matter of no difficulty whatever ; and these remedies have been accordingly applied without mercy ro the spine, and with what success may be very easily calculated from the fact, that there is not, never has been, and nner will be any such disease of the spine. Besides these symptoms found by pressure on the spine, are always symptoms of disease in the organs, and never symptoms of any kind of disease of the spine. There are cases of disease of the joints of the spine like those of the joints of other parts of the body, but then it is accompanied with similar symptoms of the disease in the joints and limbs, and not with these sympi mis. When patients r1 presented to physicians with anomalous symptoms, or with symptoms that do not quadrate with those that are given for any disease by medical writers, they almost uni- versally agree to call it a nervous disease or affection, which means only that they do not know what the disease is. It would not do, however, to tell patients they do not know what the disease s; for physicians, unlike every other class of men, are presumed to know every thing, and are consequently under the greatest obliga- tion to their teachers for suggesting an expedient so necessary to to them, and so useful to their patients. The advantage resulting from this practice can easily be esti- mated by comparing its effects in a great number of cases, VThen it will be found that it very rarely, if ever, effects a cure.