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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    CHAPTER XIII. SECONDARY LATEEAL SCLEROSIS. This form of sclerosis, the anatomical features of -which have already been described (p. 56), is owing to destructive lesions of the motor sphere in the brain or spinal cord, and as it always occurs below the seat of the anatomical lesion, is also often called descending lateral sclerosis. The part affected is not the entire lateral column, but only that portion of it which is known as the crossed pyramidal column. In cerebral lesions, the opposite side, and in lesions of the cord, if they are unilateral, the same side, is thus affected. By far the most frequent causes of secondary lateral sclerosis are haemorrhage in the central ganglia of the brain, and embolism or thrombosis of the middle cerebral artery and its branches. If hjemorrhage or softening in the central ganglia be very limited in extent, it may partly desti-oy or displace the grey nuclei, but does not tear up the white internal capsule, which constitutes the great conducting path of motor power from the brain to the limbs. In some cases, indeed, the pathological lesion is so slight that there are hardly any symptoms during life; but where the lesion is somewhat extensive, crossed incomplete hemiplegia is the result, which is generally transitory, for the patient mostly recovers the power over the affected side to a great extent in a few weeks or months. In such cases no secondary or descending sclerosis of the pyramidal strands takes place. But where hemiplegia remains more or less permanent, and is after a time followed by late rigidity of