On the tubercule of the brain in children / by James Maxwell Adams.

  • James Maxwell Adams
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the tubercule of the brain in children / by James Maxwell Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    I come now to a point which by some will be considered of more immediate practical importance, viz., the diagnosis of Tubercle in the Brain. Here the difficulties to be encountered are unquestionably very great. It is, I think, M. Guersent who terms the morbid affections of the brain and its mem- branes la houteille a Vencre. Eor some symptoms are com- mon to most cerebral diseases, while others, which are supposed to be essential to individual disorders, are often wanting. But in like manner we find symptoms which are common to chest diseases of totally different character, and but a few years have gone by since the essential differences and symptoms of Pneu- monia and Bronchitis were established and properly appreciated by the profession. We have certainly not the same physical facihties for examining diseases of the brain, but even liere our knowledge has of late years been greatly extended, and, with multiplied observations, it is not unreasonable to expect ultimately an equal precision of diagnosis. The affections with which, in the order of chances, tubercle of the brain may be confounded, are acute and chronic hydro- cephalus, cerebriform tumours of the brain, hydatids, arach- noidean hemorrhage, and hypertrophy of the brain. Now, the symptoms to which each and all of these may give rise are so associated and so much alike, that it would be exceedingly difficult to classify them with anything hke precision, yet there are circumstances in the history of the patient, and also of these different affections, which increase or lessen theprobabih - ties of their existence, and these should be considered in detail as the cases present themselves. To some of them I will allude shortly. Thus, chronic hydrocephalus is rare after the age of three years, while it is mostly after that period that the hydrocephalus of tubercle is observed. True epiliptic seizures, or amaurosis, independent of general insensibility, so frequent in tubercle, are, I believe, rarely noticed in uncomphcated hydrocephalus, either chronic or acute, but mostly in connection with tumours or growths within the cranium. Cancerous tumaurs of the brain cause symptoms so ana- logous to tubercle, that it would be affectation to draw a marked
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