Volume 2

On spasm, languor, palsy, and other disorders, termed nervous, of the muscular system / by James Arthur Wilson.

  • Wilson, James Arthur, 1795-1882.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On spasm, languor, palsy, and other disorders, termed nervous, of the muscular system / by James Arthur Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    affected muscles, and are compatible with the soundest state of their structure. Indeed, when spasm kills, we rarely learn, by dissection of the ‘‘ Nervous Sys- tem,” how death is brought about. On the other hand, large portions of the brain or spinal marrow may be slowly disorganized with no effect of spasmodic contraction in those muscles of which the nerves are continuous with the damaged portion of the medullary column. As generally ob- served, organic alteration of the nervous structure seems rather to suspend than to disturb the function of the muscle; inducing, not spasm but paralysis. Kixcepting where its effect is immediately to arrest the pulse and breath, the importance of spasm is measured not merely by its severity; but rather by the cireum- stances and general context of the case. Thus, in the sudden seizures, by Fit, of unconsciousness with loss of voluntary power, if general in the limbs, Spasm gives a distinctive and favourable character to the case; which the physician is better pleased to consider as one of epilepsy than of apoplexy. Again, the slightest stiffness or irregularity of action in the muscles of the throat, if observed a few days after the bite of a rabid ‘animal, or after lacerating wounds of the extremities, would fix our most serious attention, as threatening the horrors of tetanus or hydrophobia. In the case of a patient now under my care, who has for two years past been subject to frequent attacks of nocturnal epilepsy, a gradually increasing sensation of compres- sion across the upper part of the throat, occasionally accompanied by actual rigidity of the muscles there