A treatise on neuralgic diseases, dependent upon irritation of the spinal marrow and ganglia of the sympathetic nerve / By Thomas Pridgin Teale.

  • Teale, Thomas Pridgin, 1801?-1867.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on neuralgic diseases, dependent upon irritation of the spinal marrow and ganglia of the sympathetic nerve / By Thomas Pridgin Teale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dition of the nerves with which they are supphed. They may be affected with weakness, spasms, tremors, or a variety of other disordered states included within the two extremes of conyulsion and paralysis. ‘The involuntary muscles may have the harmony of their actions inter- rupted, from a morbid condition of their nerves; the heart may be affected with palpitations ; the vermicular motion of the stomach, or the peristaltic action of the intestines, may be subject to irregularity. The sensibi- lity of the internal organs may likewise be affected, the heart, the stomach, the intestines being the seat of pain, referable to their nerves, and independent of in- flammation, or any alteration of structure. The secre- tions may also undergo alterations, both in quantity _and in quality, from a perverted agency of the nerves upon which they depend. Such is a very imperfect re- cital of the various morbid affections which may be in- cluded under the term Neuralgia, and so frequent is their occurrence, that they must be familiar to every prac- titioner. They are, however, often perplexing in their treatment, and not unfrequently exhaust the patience of the afflicted sufferer, and also of the medical attendant. The difficulty and embarrassment which have attended the ‘diagnosis and treatment of these affections, I am inclined to believe, has principally arisen from mistaken views of their pathology. They have too often been regarded as actual diseases of those nervous filaments which are the immediate seat of the neuralgia, instead of being considered as symptomatic of disease in the larger nervous. masses from which those filaments are derived ; hence the treatment has too frequently been ineffectually applied to the seat of neuralgia, instead of bemg directed to the more remote and less obvious seat of disease.