On some forms of paralysis from peripheral neuritis : of gouty, alcoholic, diphtheritic, and other origin / by Thomas Buzzard.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some forms of paralysis from peripheral neuritis : of gouty, alcoholic, diphtheritic, and other origin / by Thomas Buzzard. 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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    PARAPLEGIC FORM OF NEURITIS. be most affected (sometimes indeed exclusively so) is shown, as I have before remarked, in the case of the endemic disorder, Beriberi. But it is not only in connection with alcohol and Beriberi that this preponderance is observed. Several cases have fallen under my observation marked by characteristic symptoms of peripheral neuritis which have been entirely confined to the lower extremities. The following is a striking example : A gentleman, aged forty-nine, consulted me on account of numbness of tbe feet, a difficulty in standing with his eyes shut, and a feeling as though he were walking on bladders. His gait was not ataxic. He had been invalided from abroad on account, as he told me, of incipient loco- motor ataxy. His pupils were small; the knee-jerks were not elicited by blows with the percussion hammer. The prima facie resemblance to tabes was, I need scarcely say, very strong. Further examination showed the follow- ing : 1st. The patellar tendon-reflex was brought out in pei’fectly normal fashion when the side of the hand was used for striking the ligamentum patellae. 2ndly. The pupils, though small, contracted to light. 3rdly. The power of dorsal-flexing the feet was much impaired. 4thly. There was marked anaesthesia in the lower half of each leg. The wire-brush, with the strongest induced currents applied over the parts shaded in the diagram, Fig. 4, was scarcely felt at all in the feet, but gradually evoked sensation as the leg was ascended, and above the line of shading the pain of application became intolerable. About the upper part of the anaesthetic districts an ordinary touch with the