On the contractility or irritability of the muscles of paralysed limbs, and their excitability by the galvanic current, in comparison with the corresponding muscles of healthy limbs / by Robert Bentley Todd.

Date:
[1847]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the contractility or irritability of the muscles of paralysed limbs, and their excitability by the galvanic current, in comparison with the corresponding muscles of healthy limbs / by Robert Bentley Todd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    by that drug. This irritation will, in conformity with the known law of cerebral action, be communicated to the muscles of the opposite or paralysed side, and consequently the muscles of that side will first exhibit the peculiar efl^ects of strychnine.* In a few rare cases, strychnine does not aftect the paralysed limbs first. In these cases the lesion in the brain is doubt- less of such a nature that the blood is attracted to the brain- substance around it in less quantity, than to the correspond- ing parts of the opposite side. What, then, is the condition of the irritabihty or contrac- tility of the muscles of the paraWsed as contrasted with those of the sound limb ? Certainly it is not augmented. It is in exact proportion to the nutrition of the muscles. Mat- teucchs extensive and carefully conducted experiments have quite settled the much-vexed question respecting the vis insita. He has shown that the nutritive changes of muscle develope a galvanic current, which passes from the interior to the surface of the muscle, and that muscular contraction causes what may, with the highest probability, be regarded • There are many pathological facts which show that a poison in the blood is apt to be attracted lai'gely to any part to which there may he a great flow of blood from any previous cause. Four years ago I attended a lady in small-pox; she had in one groin a large congenital noevoid patch, and was much alarmed to find that this spot had an extraordinary accumulation of pustules upon it. A very similar case is related in Dr. Wm. Budd’s paper in the 2.5th volume of the Society’s Transactions, p. 129. Ollivier justly remarks, that it is not the motor power only which is affected by strychnine, but also sensibility; that paralytic limbs are frequently rendered painful by strychnine, and even before the motor power becomes affected. In the fourteenth case referred to in this paper, this effect of strychnine is recorded; and I believe this to be the most common way in which this drug begins to show its effects. Many phy- sicians write and speak of this poison as if it had a peculiar and specific influence on the spinal cord, lo the exclusion of other parts of the cerebro- spinal centres. This view I believe to be incorrect, and that the influence of .strychnine pervades the whole cerehro-spinal system ; it by no means follows that, because this drug appears to act upon the spinal cord first, it acts exclusively upon that organ.
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