Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas Dixon Savill.

  • Savill, Thomas Dixon, 1856-1910.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas Dixon Savill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    119/250 (page 101)
    lot called to see her on account of the severe pelvic pain from which she was again suffering. Upon my advice laparo- tomy was performed. The uterus (containing fibromata) and appendages were removed, and among the diseased conditions in the latter was a thick-walled cyst the size of an egg, containing grumous, highly septic material, which had evidently been in existence a very long time, and had apparently been the source of both the menstrual trouble and (by absorption) the chronic septicaemia that had given rise to the prolonged neurasthenic condition. Thereafter she made a complete recovery of health after an epoch of twenty years’ invalidism. Such cases illustrate the complexity of the causes of neurasthenia, the difficulty of arriving at a satisfactory statistical classification based on etiology, and the liabihty of overlooking, in any given case, the real root of the evil. The third question we have to consider is whether one can, by the symptoms, differentiate these jour 'pathological varieties of neurasthenia from one another, and so detect the kind of cause in operation. Now, I do not know of any one set of symptoms which are absolutely charac- teristic of one pathological group, but the relative incidence of the disease on the different parts of the nervous system in a given case will sometimes afford a clue to which group the case belongs. This relative incidence is therefore a profitable inquiry, both chnically (from the point of view of diagnosis) and pathologically, and we will inquire briefly concerning each group, the part of the nervous system chiefly affected, and the symptoms which predominate in that group. Incidentally this will help to afford us a patho- logical explanation of some of the many various symptoms in neurasthenia.