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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    rases the very large proportion are among women, and of a decidedly hysterical type. Whereas, of the forty I have given here, sixteen are males, and there is not one of hysteria, though in one or two there were slight hysterical symptoms. They say, page 216, that any serious irri- tation of the cord can hardly exist in young girls without hysterical symptoms. I do not find this borne out by my own observation. Again, The young, under the age of puberty, are least of all liable to be at- tacked by spinal irritation. And page 107, Spinal irritation seldom affects men or children, but is continually met with in women. Now, in the forty cases I have given, there are fourteen under seven- teen years of age; but were I to take the average of my whole experience, the proportion of persons under this age to that of adults would be fully a half. I now regret that, proceeding too much upon the plan of present- ing only those cases which appeared to me to possess some new and peculiar interest, I have given so few of children. This error I shall en- deavour to remedy hereafter, perhaps, in a subsequent edition. Such discrepancies are, as I have already said, startling at first sight, yet I think, on candid consideration, it is easy to account for them all. In the first place, the very circumstance of the Messrs. Griffin's cases being chiefly hysterical, accounts for the lapidity of cure. The rare oc- currence of hysteria in Scotland, compared with England and Ireland, I have frequently heard remarked, and I have very good reasons for know- ing the remark to be just. In twenty years' practice, I did not meet with a dozen cases in Scotland: but that this afflicting complaint proceeds entirely from spinal irritation, more or less transient, I have not the slightest doubt, and I should in most cases anticipate a speedy and very effectual cure from dermal irritation. I have always found it a great matter in such cases to give the patient something to think about. With regard to the other disagreements in opinion between the Messrs. Griffin and myself.—It appears that the observations of these gentlemen on this subject have been made principally in a hospital and dispensary, the patient.3 in which are furnished from a population of a peculiarly mo- bile nervous temperament, of passions no less keen than ill regulated, whose political and religious feelings are, unfortunately, in a state of ex- treme exasperation, and who are but too often compelled to the use of a diet the most unlikely to promote a healthy tone of the nervous system. My practice has been, on the contrary, entirely private, and among a people proverbial for their sedate steadiness of character, cool passions, and, generally speaking, regular habits ; added to which, in all but one of the cases given, the comforts, if not the luxuries of life, were within reach of the subjects. Allowing for the general preponderance of disease among the female sex to that which prevails among men, I cannot admit from my own ex- perience that there is a greater tendency to spinal irritation in the one sex than in the other, I entirely agree with Messrs. Griffin, that the whole rationale of symptoms, in hysteria and many other painful uterine affec- tions, will yet be found in spinal or ganglionic debility or irritation; but I no less confidently anticipate that the same will occur with regard to hypochondriasis, gout, renal debility, and many other diseases peculiar lo our own sex, as well as all that widely diffused tribe of maladies to which both sexes are equally liable, viz. those arising from the poison of malaria, and those acute diseases ushered in by rigors and pains in the spinal column. If I might here be permitted to make a remark, I would say, that I