A contribution to the study of muscular tremor / by Frederick Peterson.

  • Frederick Peterson
Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A contribution to the study of muscular tremor / by Frederick Peterson. 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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    A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF MUS- CULAR TREMOR.1 By FREDERICK PETERSON, M.D. ATHOLOGICAL motor disturbances present a wide and interesting field for study, too wide and varied for review in a short paper. Hence, grosser movements, such as the choreiform, athetoid and epileptiform will not be considered here. I have a few words to say upon the finer pathological motions known as muscular tremblings or tremors, such as are found in hysteria, neurasthenia, multi- ple sclerosis, paralysis agitans, morbus Basedowii, senility, and in poisoning by mercury, lead, alcohol, tobacco, etc., many of which resemble the physiological tremors produced by the action of cold upon the body, and of the depressing emotion fear. The origin of rhythmical motions of all kinds has been a matter for much speculation. For the coarser oscillations of the different forms of eclampsia and chorea the theory ascribing their usual genesis to explosions of force in the cortical cells of the motor areas of the brain is generally ac- cepted. But the origin of the finer tremors is more mysteri- ous, and the formation of a hypothesis concerning them more difficult. Have they their origin in the nervous sys- tem or in the muscular tissue itself? If in the nervous sys- tem is it peripheral or central ? In physiology we have learned that curara paralyzes the motor nerve endings, and that the sartorius of a curarized frog when dipped in a saline solution will contract rhythmi- cally for several days (Biedemann).2 ' Read before the American Neurolog ^Association, at Washington, D. C. bept. 20, 1888. * 2 Landois and Sterling. Text Book of Human Physiology, 2d ed, p. 510. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN TO THE NEW YORK CITY HOSPITAL FOR NERVOUS DISSEASES, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.