History of a case of paraplegia from injury of the spinal chord, causing inertia of the kidneys, and other anomalous symptoms / by John Home Peebles.

Date:
[1834?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of a case of paraplegia from injury of the spinal chord, causing inertia of the kidneys, and other anomalous symptoms / by John Home Peebles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    13/16 (page 11)
    The pamphlets, he says, which accompany this letter contain the history of the singular disease, concerning which His Britannic Majesty's Consul-General has done me the ho- nour to request the exact particulars. The history has been communicated by me to my colleagues of the Royal Academy of Padua, the place where the individual lives who is the sub- ject of my observations. Several of them have become person- ally acquainted with the reality of what I have stated in this history with every possible accuracy. Many eminent Italian and foreign physicians have alone and along with me visited and examined the patient, and I have undertaken to give to the public this account as minutely as possible, in order that every one who wished todo so may satisfy themselves of the accu- racy of the extraordinary facts herein related. This is yet pos- sible, as the patient is still alive. (Here Dr Montesanto o-ives the symptoms as already described, which need not therefore be repeated.) He then proceeds, it is now about 21 months since he has brought up any fecal matter. For several days un- usual pains of the belly, with swelling of the hypochondrium, and great tension had threatened new danger; but bleeding and emollient applications to the abdomen soon brought matters back to their usual state. The patient is, however, more deteriorated, and the pain he continually complains of in the spina dorsalis, where the paraplegia has its origin, is more acute than usual. Having observed the progress of this malady with attention for many years, and being anxious to keep an exact account of the disease, and what may be the result of the post mortem examination, that I may particularly inform men of science through the medium of the public medical journals, I shall likewise have the honour of transmitting farther information to any medical Institution, as I have already done to the Roval Academy of Paris.' J This Academy at its sitting of the 26th of February 1833 had a discussion on a report drawn up at the desire of this In- stitution by M. Olhvier, which is alluded to in several of the Pans journals at the time, (in the Journal Universel et Heb domadaire de Medecihe of March, the Revue Medicale of the same month, and the Archives de Medecine of the pre ceding February.) v M. Ollivier mentioned that a similar fact was communicated to him by M. Denis of Commercy, in the case of a man who had received an injury on the spine, when only a few years old which produced from that time a paraplegia with total sup' pression of both alvine and urinary secretions, and that thp patient lived in that state 72 years. Although we should