Pathological and practical researches on diseases of the brain and the spinal cord / By John Abercrombie.

  • Abercrombie, John, 1780-1844
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pathological and practical researches on diseases of the brain and the spinal cord / By John Abercrombie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    months. On the death of the patient, which happened some time after from fever, he found that one of the lumbar vertebra had been fractured in the body without displacement, and had united. Under this head, I may allude very briefly to the subject of wounds in the spinal cord, in regard to which there are some very singular facts upon record. A young man, mentioned by Ollivier, was struck with a poniard through the upper part of the neck, and fell in- stantly, deprived of feeling and motion of all the parts below the head. He had also retention of urine, but recovered gradually, and was able to walk a little in about five months. Ina similar case by Boyer, the man recovered, but with palsy of the right arm, and loss of feeling of the left side in all the parts below the thorax. The case is well known ofa man, mentioned by Dessault, who lived twenty-four hours, and moved all his limbs freely after the cord had been completely divided by a musket bullet at the tenth dorsal vertebra. A still more remarkable case is related in the Memoirs of the Aca- ‘demy of Sciences. A man received a wound with a sword among the lower dorsal vertebrae, which soon healed, and he was afterwards able for long marches. After a considerable time, the place became painful, suppurated, and was opened ; and a piece of the point of the sword, two inches long, was extracted. He died in thirty-six hours ; and it was found that the sword had penetrated between the spinous and oblique pro- cesses on the left side, that it had completely traversed the spinal canal, and had lodged in the opposite side. A man mentioned in the first volume of the Archives. Generales de Medecine, received a wound by a musket bullet, which entered at the groin, and came out near: the first lumbar vertebra. The wound soon healed, but after a short time loss of feeling began around the cica- . trix, and gradually extended until it affected the whole: left side of the body except the face. Any part of the: thorax, the abdomen, or the leg or arm of that side, . could be pinched with any degree of force without feel--