Clinical lectures on diseases of the nervous system / by Thomas Buzzard.

  • Buzzard, Thomas, 1831-1919.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on diseases of the nervous system / by Thomas Buzzard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    advanced, so that it is impossible to say that the behaviour of the tendon-reflex is at all characteristic. The break which causes its absence in such a case is in the anterior horn, as coarsely pictured in Fig. 6. The condition of the tendon-reflex in the deuteropathic form is extremely interesting. Before considering it, however, I should like to draw attention to Fig. 7. In Fig. 7. this diagram there is a rude representation of sclerosis of a lateral column of the spinal cord. In a previous diagram (Fig. 2) the position of the sclerosis of the posterior root- zone was indicated. It was shown that if the afferent fibres from the tendon go, as we believe they do, with the sensory roots, they pass through the outer part of the posterior column, and consequently are there exposed to a lesion which we know produces atrophic changes in them. The nervous arc is therefore cut at this point, and that absence of tendon-reflex results which is so conspicuous a feature of tabes dorsalis. The position of sclerosis of the lateral column, which we are now con- sidering, is, it will be observed, altogether outside the nervous arc by which we suppose the stimulus from the tendon to the muscle to be transmitted. We should expect, therefore, to find that in sclerosis of a lateral column the tendon-reflex would not be absent. And that