On sclerosis of the spinal cord : including locomotor ataxy, spastic spinal paralysis, and other system-diseases of the spinal cord, their pathology, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment / by Julius Althaus.

Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On sclerosis of the spinal cord : including locomotor ataxy, spastic spinal paralysis, and other system-diseases of the spinal cord, their pathology, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment / by Julius Althaus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    evidence for it has as yet been furnished by morbid anatomy, the term spastic paralysis appears preferable, as it does not commit us to any definite theory about the nature of the malady. No doubt exists about the occurrence of a combined affection of the white lateral columns and the grey anterior cornua, which was first distinguished by Charcot, and termed by him amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the chief symptoms being motor paresis and rigidity, followed by atrophy of the muscular fibre. Another primary affection of this kind is multiple, insular, or dissemi- nated sclerosis, which is also called sclerosis in patches, and which may affect not only the different portious of the cord, more especially its antero-lateral columns, but also the medulla oblongata, pons varolii, the central white sub- stance of the cerebellum, and the medullary substance of the cerebral hemispheres. In this disease the morbid process is, as a rule, not so severe as in tabes ; for while in the latter the nerve-fibre eventually perishes altogether, that important portion of it which is known as the axis- cylinder appears often to be spared in insular sclerosis. There are further anatomical differences between this and other forms of sclerosis, which will be fully described hereafter. All forms of primary sclerosis are symmetrical, and only exceptionally confined to one half of the organ. Secondary sclerosis, on the other hand, is mostly uni- lateral, and is the result of some other primary disease, such as haemorrhage into the brain, softening of the cerebral sub- stance from embolism or thrombosis of blood-vessels, or of haemorrhage into the substance of the cord, and acute myelitis, Pott's disease of the vertebrae with compression of the cord, etc. When it occurs after destructive lesions of the motor area of the brain, it affects only that portion of the cord which corresponds physiologically to the dis- eased hemisphere, that is, the crossed pyramidal column,