On the pathology of the pneumogastric nerve : being the Lumleian lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1876 ; also, Cold shock in its action on the pneumogastric nerve / by S.O. Habershon.

  • Habershon, S. O. (Samuel Osborne), 1825-1889.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pathology of the pneumogastric nerve : being the Lumleian lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1876 ; also, Cold shock in its action on the pneumogastric nerve / by S.O. Habershon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    and irritable, but there was no evidence of any organic disease ; the tongue was pale and flabby, and he complained of pain at the back of the head ; the countenance was not expressive of distress, but the patient said the pain was intense. It was evident that the branches of the pneumogastric were espe- cially affected, and that the malady was connected with disorder of the nervous system, and did not arise from organic mischief at the stomach. It was not one, but several branches of the nerve that were involved ; and sometimes one, sometimes another, was affected. In another, a gentleman aged forty-two, whose brother died of phthisis, had attacks of intense nausea, which came on every two or three months during seven years ; the attacks, he said, amounted to “ agony ” He had a distressed countenance, and a sense of fulness of the head ; the appetite was poor, and the bowels confined; there was aching, or rather increased sensitiveness, in the spine ; the abdomen was relaxed, and nothing abnormal could be felt. The recti sometimes became rigid; the urine was of specific gravity 1,020, and was free from albumen and from sugar. This patient was relieved by the injection of morphia, but more effectually by strengthening the nervous system. Sometimes nervous twitchings came on in these patients, as if there were a slight epileptiform convulsion; in others, the excessive irritability of the stomach is followed by melancholia.