Sciatica : a record of clinical observations on the causes, nature, and treatment of sixty-eight cases / by A. Symons Eccles.

  • Eccles, A. Symons.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sciatica : a record of clinical observations on the causes, nature, and treatment of sixty-eight cases / by A. Symons Eccles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    the return of sensation, and the general pain which follows the ' awakening ' of the ' sleepy limb ' is in some cases replaced by the acute shooting pain of sciatica which often marks the sudden onset of the disorder. It seems probable that in such cases the deeper-lying branches and the nerves of the trunk-sheath have been stimu- lated by the cold impression, and under its pro- longed influence have become temporarily paralyzed. Then when, either from voluntary movement or from the application of warmth, the circulation is restored, the nerves are again stimulated by the reaction, and, under the conditions of active con- gestion arising out of the rapid restoration of the circulation, the nerve-endings are greatly excited, stimulation amounting to pain being the result. It can be shown by experiment that tactile sensibility varies very greatly in the same limb under the different conditions of warmth and cold, and the writer has recorded the influence of massage on the assthesiometry of the skin.* Similarly, he has found that painful impressions are more acute and more easily elicited in the skin of the limbs when the surface is warm and fiill of blood than when there is cutaneous anemia the result of cold, so that the acute pain and * ' Physiological Effects of Massage,' Practitioner, June, 1887.