On the muscular contractions which are occasionally to be observed after death from cholera. Read before the Westminster Medical Society, October 20th, 1849 / by Wm. Frederick Barlow.

  • Barlow, W. F. (William Frederick), 1817-1853.
Date:
1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the muscular contractions which are occasionally to be observed after death from cholera. Read before the Westminster Medical Society, October 20th, 1849 / by Wm. Frederick Barlow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    nothing easier; but when we come to their solution, or rather the attempt to solve them, we have a problem before us that we cannot master. But surely they should be more closely studied than they yet have been, and a good history of particulars obtained at any rate. The following are amongst the inquiries which might be made :— Do they happen exclusively in those cases where patients expire in “ col¬ lapse P” Are those persons most prone to them who sink with unusual rapidity, and suffer to an uncommon degree from cramps ? Are strong and muscular persons especially subject to them ? Do they more particularly affect those muscles which were the chief seats of cramp in life-time ? What is the most usual time of their occurrence ? What is the longest period known to elapse between death and their com¬ mencement ? What is the greatest extent of their duration at present known ? Can they be readily excited and ag¬ gravated P and, if so, what stimulants are most efficacious ? In what proportion of instances do they occur ? Supposing them to affect many parts, in what locality do they, speaking generally, first appear ? Let me add a question of another order :— Are they a renewal of those actions which during life occasion the cramps whereby so many are tormented ? or are they to be considered as peculiar movements occurring in the dead alone ? I have already statedsome facts which bear upon these questions to some ex¬ tent, and will refrain from repetition. I wait to learn the experience of others. No doubt these contractions happen through the operation of some fixed law, which is not the less a law be¬ cause so obscure to us : and we may assume that there are unlike states after death in cholera, from the circumstance, taken by itself even, of their sometimes occurring and oftentimes not. No¬ thing would be more gratuitous than to affirm that they do not take place always under the like circumstances; for we are ignorant of the conditions needed to originate them, and can only conclude that those conditions are present by the existence of the phe¬ nomena. They must be distinguished from all actions artificially excited, for they are independent of external agencies of any kind ; and, if it should be proved in some instances wherein they are ob¬ servable, that certain artificial stimuli will excite or aggravate them, a dis¬ tinction must be drawn between those which happen and those which are provoked. I think there is every reason to infer that they are caused by a stimulus acting within the muscles, and are therefore very contrary to such motions as we can occasion by galvanism or any other excitant. Certainly they most resemble the spasmodic actions which are common during life in cho¬ lera, and are not comparable to move¬ ments dependent either upon direct or reflex excitement of the spinal cord, or to those caused by irritation of the trunk of a nerve. In one respect (if not in more than one) they may be likened to the effects of rigor mortis, which, as may sometimes be observed of these contractions, affects parts in succession. Unusual when considered as to the sum of deaths composed of the issues of disease in general, they are not so when regarded in reference to cholera alone. Inexplicable they may be fairly called, but things more familiar are quite as much so. Why rigor mortis happens we know not: we know only that it does happen. At present we must be content to consider them as facts, and avoid all tempting hypotheses, and accurately observe them, as oppor¬ tunities allow, with a painstaking re¬ gard to every circumstance. No ad¬ vances in knowledge can ever be made by spinning one mystery around ano¬ ther ; but by this means complexities are indefinitely multiplied, and super¬ fluous impediments offered to inquiry. Westminster Hospital,