Neuralgia : its various forms, pathology, and treatment : being the Jacksonian prize essay of the Royal college of surgeons for 1850 : with some additions / by C. Toogood Downing.

  • Downing, C. Toogood (Charles Toogood)
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Neuralgia : its various forms, pathology, and treatment : being the Jacksonian prize essay of the Royal college of surgeons for 1850 : with some additions / by C. Toogood Downing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    159/438 (page 135)
    most deserving of notice. The oil of turpentine may be mentioned as especially useful in sciatica, and the hydrocyanic acid in neuralgia of the viscera. I may add the iodide of potassium, as especially useful in the rheumatic variety of tic douloureux. LOCAL APPLICATIONS. The local means at our disposal are various at the present day. In addition to the usual appli- ances of leeches, fomentations, poultices, lotions, and anodyne embrocations, which are of little avail in this disease, we have Blistees.—In that kind of tic douloureux dis- tinguished as rheumatic neuralgia, a succession of blisters is calculated to be of great service. In the spasmodic disease they are of little use, except perhaps in very rare instances. Dr. MaccuHoch believes them to be positively injurious. The re- sult of his extensive experience justified him in saying :* I have never yet seen a case where, if the blister was applied near to the disordered nerve, the pain was not aggravated. Such also, I have since found, was the experience of Heberden. And very often, when that particular pain was not * Op. cit. vol. ii. p. 387.