The principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : with the fallacies of the faculty, in a series of lectures / by Samuel Dickson ; containing also an introduction and notes by William Turner.

  • Dickson, Samuel, 1802-1869.
Date:
1848
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : with the fallacies of the faculty, in a series of lectures / by Samuel Dickson ; containing also an introduction and notes by William Turner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    to teach that such disorder is always dependent on some pressure on the brain or spine. There is no doubt that pressure on these parts can cause palsy ; but much more frequently this disease is the effect of a weakness of the brain or spine, produced by exhaustion, the cause of such exhaustion be- ing various of course. Paralytic disease has often been produced by spurge, and oftener still by loss of blood. The recent case of Sir William Geary must be still fresh in every body's mind. That gentleman met with a sud- den loss of blood from an accidental wound of the carotid artery ; palsy of the left side ensued. Weakly persons, on suddenly rising from their chair, sometimes all at once lose the use of a leg or arm. Most cases of paralytic disease, if properly sifted, will be found to be only the termination of pre- vious constitutional disturbance ; previous threatenings of such loss of power having been more or less frequently felt by the subjects of every case. More- over, in a number of cases, palsy is an intermittent disease throughout its whole course, being preceded by chills and heats, and going off with a return of the proper temperature of the body. How can you reconcile the idea of permanent pressure with intermittent phenomena 1 In one of the numbers of the Dublin Journal, I find a case of paralysis of some of the muscles necessary for the proper performance of the functions of speech—Aphonia, as it is called by professional men. This case will show you that palsy, like every other form of disorder, may exhibit the most per- fect periodic intermissions. It is taken from a foreign journal [Hecker,s\. A peasant girl was attacked in the following manner:—Speechlessness came on every day at four o'clock, p.m., accompanied by a feeling of weight about the tongue, which remained a quarter of an hour. The patient, while it lasted, could not utter any sound, but occasionally made an indistinct hiss- ing noise. Consciousness did not seem impaired during the fit. She ascribed her inability to speak to a feeling of weight in the tongue. The paroxysms went off with a large evacuation of watery urine, accompanied by perspira- tion and sleep. Ten such attacks had occurred, when Dr. Richter of Wies- baden was called to see her; he ordered her considerable doses of sulphate of Quinine, with immediate good effect from the first day. The attack returned, but in a mitigated form, and on the second day no trace of it was visible, except a certain degree of debility and fatigue, felt at the usual hour of its com- ing on. The corporeal temperature is not stated by the reporter of the case, but the periodic manner in which it came on and went off, to say nothing of the mode of its cure, sufficiently illustrates its nature. Not long ago, I was consulted in a similar case, which was moreover complicated with palsy of one side. Sarah Warner, aged 25, married, had suffered periodically from loss of speech, and also an inability to move the leg and arm of one side. Various remedies had been ineffectually prescribed by her medical attend- ants, who all looked upon her disease as Apoplectic—in other words, they supposed it to be caused by pressure on the brain. One of them, indeed, proposed to bleed her, but she would not consent. When she applied to me, I ordered her a combination of Quinine and Iron, after which she never had another fit. I shall now give you the details of a case of palsy which I treated suc- cessfully, after it had been long considered hopeless:—Mrs. Sargent, aged 40, a married woman, and the mother of several children, had kept her bed for eight years, on account of paralysis of the lower extremities ; during which period she had been under the treatment of eight or nine different physicians and surgeons of the Cheltenham dispensary, Dr. Cannon and Mr. C. T, Cooke among others. Such at least was the woman's own statement, con- firmed to me by many people of respectability, who had visited her from the commencement of her illness. When I first saw her, she could not move either leg; her voice was an almost inaudible whisper; she was liable to frequent retchings, and she complained of spasms with much pain of the loins and limbs. Her last dispensary medicine, mercury, which she believed had