On some disorders of nutrition related with affections of the nervous system (neurotic dystrophies) / by William M. Ord.

  • Ord, William M. (William Miller), 1834-1902.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some disorders of nutrition related with affections of the nervous system (neurotic dystrophies) / by William M. Ord. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    36/50 page 32
    cularly in the knees. Conditions of this kind indicate an effect upon the spinal cord which is very nearly reacting in trophic influence upon the limbs. I may relate a case in which it seems to me that an actual trophic influence was exerted. A gentleman, aged 30, who had lost his wife about two years before, came to me with painful affection of the knees. Both knee-joints were greatly distended with fluid and were tender, but not much heated. The condition reminded one of the arthropathie des ataxiques ; but no other sign of tabes dorsal is could be detected then or since. I tried various remedies without success, and he went to many doctors and many baths, without obtaining a cure ; though at last with some relief. Then he married again. Not long after, he came to tell me that he was quite well. He also told me, upon my asking him as to his bachelor life, that he had been almost constantly harassed by the thorn in the flesh, but that he had been absolutely chaste, and he himself was of opinion that marriage had been the means of cure. I hear of late o (some seven years after the second marriage) that his joints are getting bad again, and at the same time, that his wife suffers from a uterine affection almost altogether preventing cohabitation. Upon such grounds as the foregoing considerations afford, I suggest it is possible that irritation of nerve- cells in the spinal cord, carried to them through channels of urethral nerves, may set up an excitement in those cells giving rise to irritative processes in the joints supplied by them. M. Charcot s cases already referred to indicate rather a process of inhibition than anything else; of torpor, as he says, of the nerve-cells under centripetal stimulation coming from joints.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3