Practical observations on diseases of the heart, lungs, stomach, liver, etc., etc, occasioned by spinal irritation : and on the nervous system in general as a source of organic disease / by John Marshall.

  • Marshall, John, 1818-1891.
Date:
1837
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on diseases of the heart, lungs, stomach, liver, etc., etc, occasioned by spinal irritation : and on the nervous system in general as a source of organic disease / by John Marshall. 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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    which I was consulted. I could not, hy the most minute inspection, discover any thorn, or mark of pricking. I recommended a powerful poultice to be applied, and an anodyne to be taken. Next morning I very carefully removed the epidermis, and, with the assistance of a microscope, I detected a A^ery minute spicula sticking erect in the flesh of the finger. On this being removed, the swelling of the hand and arm subsided, and all painful sensations vanished. If, then, all this disturbance could arise at the distal extremity of a nerve, from the pressure of an offending substance so small as completely to elude the naked eye, is it not fair analogy to conclude that causes equally, or more, imperceptible to our visual organs, occurring at the origin, or in the course of the nerves, may occasion similar, or greater, disturbance at the extremities, and consequently in the circulation depending upon the offended nerves—disturbance, terminating, as this no doubt would have done if neglected, in con- gestion, inflammation, or local disease of some organ, probably very distant, from the real seat of injury ? That such cases do occur, the familiar instances I have already adduced, of pressure on the ulnar and ischiatie nerves producing pain, not at the point of pressure, but in the terminating branches of these nerves, sufficiently evidence. I have seen continued pressure of these nerves produce both swelling and inflammation of the hand and foot, which subsided immediately on the pressure being removed. But what should we say to the professor of the healing art, who, in such a case, instead of addressing himself to remove that pressure, productive of the symptomatic swelling and inflammation, directed his whole curative measures to these symptoms, treating them as in themselves idiopathic ? Yet what would this be, but that which we see done every day, in cases differing in no respect from what I have named, except in their localities ? Let the Anomalous Cases, which crowd our Medical Literature, answer this question. Cases, in which the unhappy patients have been subjected to the most tire- some, often, alas! agonizing succession of experimental remedies, applied to the seat of pain, without its ever once seeming to occur to the minds of those who practise them, that the thousandth part of all this trouble, applied to the origin of the nerve, where that is attainable, or to its ganglionic junctions, would be more likely to effect the end proposed—if that be to produce a cure. We have in our own day seen a medical man submit to be hacked in pieces by successive amputations of his hand and arm, in the vain and fruitless hope of obtaining relief from agony evidently arising from morbid action at the origin of the brachial nerves, and which, therefore, no repetition of amputation could ever tend even to alle- viate* ! What 1 particularly contend for is this—That irritation, or debility consequent upon irritation, of the nerves, at their origin or ganglionic junctions, will, in time, and occasionally in a very short time, pro- * See note A. 3