Account of a singular effect produced by acupuncture in a case of protracted lock-jaw / [William Seller].

  • Seller, William, 1798-1869
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Account of a singular effect produced by acupuncture in a case of protracted lock-jaw / [William Seller]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    EXTEACTED FROM THE NORTHERN JOURNAL OP MEDICINE FOR APRIL 1845. ACCOUNT / OF A SINGULAE EFFECT PEODUCED BY ACUPUNCTUEE IN A CASE OF PEOTEACTED LOCK-JAW. By william SELLER, M.D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, one of the Physicians to the Royal Public Dispensary, &c. Sec. Cases of lock-jaw of long duration are not so uncommon, at least in females, as to attract great attention. Of a case of this kind, however, I thought it worth while to put together some particulars several years ago, on account of the singular effect which followed the attempt to cure it by acupuncture. The case had been previously treated at intervals by seve¬ ral medical men; it was put into my hands in May 1827 by Dr E. Binns, who was then pursuing his medical studies here, and for the first period of the treatment I had the benefit of his assistance. The patient was an unmarried woman about twenty-five years of age, a lady’s maid, who by her own report, though usually active and healthy, had been subject from an early age to fre¬ quent attacks of suppurating sore throat, in which the jaw often became nearly immovable for two or three days before the dis¬ charge of the matter. In the spring of 1826, she suffered severely from one of those attacks, which, after lasting for several weeks, ended in an entire loss of the motion of the jaw. Some severe symptoms, which by the description appear to have been of a hysteric nature, occurred about the same time. This attack of lock-jaw, under the use of general and local detraction of blood, blistering, and the like, yielded at the end of six weeks, in so far that she could put a teaspoon into her mouth.