On athetosis, or imbecility with ataxia / by T. Clay [sic] Shaw.

  • Shaw, Thomas Claye, 1840-1926.
Date:
[1873]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On athetosis, or imbecility with ataxia / by T. Clay [sic] Shaw. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    in sleep. By using a certain amount of force you can always overcome the spasm in opening successively the fingers ol the closed palm, but an attempt to overcome the spasm of one group of muscles is very apt to set it off in the opposite dilec- tion. It seems like incontrollable muscular impulse, without paralysis and without permanent spasm or rigidity, a quasi rhythmic spasm, somewhat resembling the peristaltic movement of the involuntary muscles in the alternating or successive affection of groups of muscles.’ Neither here, however, nor in Ur. Hammond’s cases, is any mention made of movements in the muscles of the head, neck, or face, which in my instances are well-marked, and resemble in character those of the fore- arm and fingers. They consist of a slow protrusion of the head forwards and upwards, to one side or the other, and of its retraction downwards and to the other side. As might be expected, the muscles in the sub-occipital triangle are hyper- trophied like those in the arms. The facial movements are very extraordinary, and give rise to varying expressions, the most frequent being that of a broad grin, owing to spasms of the retractors of the angles of the mouth and the ‘ laughing muscles,’ the zygomatics, and the lower fibres of the orbiculares palpebrarum, which raise the lower eyelid slightly; the forehead, too, is wrinkled. To this succeeds—or may succeed—a com- paratively blank look, from relaxation of these muscles, but the marks of the wave are shown in the furrows left, giving an appearance of age greater than is actually the case. Not that an expression is developed suddenly, for it often happens that one emotion appears to be merged into another, owing to the vermicular manner in which the wave progresses; thus the occipito-frontalis may contract, elevating the eyebrows and giving the expression of wonder, which expression may directly afterwards pass into that of a broad grin, by the contraction of the retractors of the mouth and lower jaw, displaying the in- terior of the mouth and the teeth. As the corrugator supercilii, . or grief-muscle, may also be excited by the wave passing over the face, the expression caused by it mixes at times curiously with the others. It does not appear that the emotion corre- sponding to the contraction of a certain group of muscles, i.e. to an expression, is excited, for the movement is very transient; •and besides, it by no means follows (as some have on the con- trary asserted) that the action of certain combined groups of face-muscles evokes the emotion which, as a rule, in the ana- tomy of expression, precedes the contraction. Persons looking at an actor whose features are strongly worked may assume a