Cases of stretching of the facial nerve for tic convulsif ; Cases of intussusception treated by operation ; Case of rare fracture of the radius / by Rickman J. Godlee.

  • Godlee, Rickman John, Sir, 1849-1925.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cases of stretching of the facial nerve for tic convulsif ; Cases of intussusception treated by operation ; Case of rare fracture of the radius / by Rickman J. Godlee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Cases of Stretching of the Facial Nerve. By J. Rickman Godlee, M.S. Read June 1, 1883. IN tlie fourteenth volume of the Transactions of this Society, at p. 44, there is a paper by Dr. W. Allen Sturge and myself reporting a case of Tic Convidsif, for the cure of which stretching of the facial nerve was practised. The operation, at the time our paper was written, had been per- formed about four months, and we were then able to give a very favorable report, but even at that comparatively early period we had noticed (although the patient herself was quite unaware of it) the very slightest tremor in some of the fibres of the orbicularis oris. She remained, however, practically well for nearly nine months after the operation, and although on one or two occasions conscious of a slight return of the twitching, had almost reached the point of forgetting it, when on April 29, 1881, she was very much affected by a severe nervous shock (a man, who had forced his way into her house under false pretences, suddenly declaring himself a bailiff who had come to distrain the property of a lady who was living with her). She said that immediately the whole of her face became violently convulsed; and though with rest and tonic medicines the spasm disappeared more or less for some time afterwards, still it gradually increased until it had regained all its former intensity. Her general health varies, being sometimes very good, at others rather indefinitely poor; she still feels a painful spot at times near the top of her head at a part where, years ago, she received a severe injury; and she suffers pretty con- stantly from neuralgic pains of varying intensity in different places, but principally in the position of the right supra-orbital nerve, for which she obtains most relief (out of all the drugs and external applications I have suggested) from the use of menthol paste. She remembers with gratitude the period of