On the nature and treatment of tic douloureux sciatica, and other neuralgic disorders / by Henry Hunt.

Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature and treatment of tic douloureux sciatica, and other neuralgic disorders / by Henry Hunt. 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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    But it is yet to be explained, of what nature is the disorder of these organs, to which neuralgia may be attributed; for “ pathologists do not seem to agree to what the disorder of the system the association belongs.”—(Sir H. Halford.) As a great variety of diseases of the nervous system are correctly attributed to disorders of the digestive organs—such, for example, as a diminu- tion of the functions of the brain; local or partial palsy; diminished sensibility, and the opposite but equally perverted state of the functions of the nerves; morbidly increased sensibility and pain ; spasms and convulsions, and others,—may it not be asked, do all these different effects arise from one and the same kind of disorder of those viscera ? Or docs each kind of secondary disease depend on a different and peculiar condition of them r Or are they modified by some idiosyncrasy of the patient ? Could these questions be answered satis- factorily, some at least of the difficulty and obscu- rity which at present surround these diseases would be removed. It has been stated that neu- ralgia chiefly occurs (when there is no immediate local cause of irritation) either in persons naturally of a weak or irritable habit, or in those who have been reduced to this state by long-continued illness, by mental anxiety, or by other debilitating causes. It occasionally happens that one of the viscera