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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    are by no means always present. Nor, as I have said, are the changes when present so constant in character that we can draw any exact inference from them in the present state of our knowledge, except that there is probably some tissue change in the substance of the nerve-trunk. A -working man, sixty-nine years of age, applied at the hospital on account of shooting pain, aching, and numbness in the left forearm and hand. He described a kind of tingling from the shoulder to the fingers. After a time, under treatment, he lost the painful sensations, but the hand felt as if asleep, heavy, and big, and the grasp was much weaker than that of the right. Common sensibility was not much affected, but he could not feel a pin to pick it up so well as with the other hand. Cold felt colder, and heat hotter, to the left hand than the right. Although he had never suffered from gout and had not noticed gravel in the urine, the treatment was directed towards the pos- sibility of this disorder. In the course of his attendance he had an unmistakeable attack of acute gout in one of his big toes. About a month afterwards, in July last, he reported his hand and arm much improved, though still to a certain extent numb. In the ulnar and musculo- spiral nerves electrical examination gave K S Z > A S Z. Towards the end of October, having meanwhile been almost free from discomfort, he again attended with a return of the old symptoms. The thumb and first three fingers were described as feeling quite dead, and the grasp of the hand was very weak. Examination of the median nerve at the hend of the elbow with a galvanic current was now made. The resistance of the tissues over the nerve in 3