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

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.

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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    function prevail to a degree not observed, under other circumstances, in the cases of which they form a part. In the northern range of the British dominions, the tetanus that follows wounds is not of uncommon occurrence. Of the undistinguished working vulgar many perish by it annually in our hospitals. But it is not confined to this class. Within the last few years a British nobleman, in the prime of manhood, died of tetanus at his own seat in Kent; and the shock is recent, which was felt through society on the death of the Governor-General of Canada from the same cause. There was a dismal resemblance in the character of this last case to the hydrophobia, under which a preceding governor of the same province had died, not many years before. In the West Indies, and in South America, tetanus, both of the traumatic and idiopathic kind, is a very frequent disease; in Grand Cairo, we are informed by Clot Bey, that it is at present scarcely known. The voluntary muscles, moreover, express in their varying condition many important states of the general health; not actually those of illness, but which being known, illness may be anticipated and prevented. These indications of weak or of bad condition of the system, well appreciated by the nurse and the trainer, are not sufficiently considered by the physician. Between the skin and the voluntary muscles there is a close relation of function, which finds many illus- trations in the disorders to which both structures are liable. The remark is equally applicable to coincident or vicarious states of the muscle and of the mucous