On myalgia : its nature, causes, and treatment : being a treatise on painful and other affections of the muscular system, which have been frequently mistaken for hysterical, inflammatory, hepatic, uterine, nervous, spinal or other diseases / by Thomas Inman.

  • Thomas Inman
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On myalgia : its nature, causes, and treatment : being a treatise on painful and other affections of the muscular system, which have been frequently mistaken for hysterical, inflammatory, hepatic, uterine, nervous, spinal or other diseases / by Thomas Inman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    PREFACE. A\itli that disease ; and that the very signs relied on were, in reality, proofs that the symptoms were of a purely muscular origin. He was furtlier enabled to throw considerable light upon some of the prominent symptoms of pleurisj' and peri- tonitis, and to show that many cases called by the latter name were purely myalgic in their nature. This being so, it was clear that the subject of muscular pain had as important a bearing upon hysterical, inflammatory, and uterine diseases as it had upon spinal affections : and to designate his work simply An Explanation of Spinal Irritation, would imper- fectly describe its tendency. Considerable difiiculty still remained in selecting an adequate title. The Author was guided to the choice of the word Myalgia—first, because it had a familiar look about it, as resembling neuralgia ; secondly, because it implied no other theorj^ than that the muscles were the seats of pain ; thirdly, because it had a more classical somid than the more homel}^ phrase muscular pain, which, by its frequent repetition, would suggest to some facetious j^^itient to dub the doctor by the ignominious title of Muscle-man. At one ^time it occurred to the Author that a complete treatise upon muscular affections woidd be acceptable to the Profession. The withering of certain muscles after typhus, scarlatina, and other diseases, is one upon which much mystery hangs. The subject of infantile paralysis and shak- ing palsy is equally curious. The severe spasms which attend Asiatic cholera, and the convrdsions that so often accompany infantile diarrhea, are not yet thoroughly understood. But to have included these, and kindred topics, would have swelled the book to an unnecessary length, and called attention away from the main points lie has endeavoured to establish.
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