Case of Hon. Charles Sumner / by Marshall S. Perry.

  • Perry, Marshall S. (Marshall Sears), -1859.
Date:
[1856?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of Hon. Charles Sumner / by Marshall S. Perry. 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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    5 there must have been either congestion, or concussion followed by congestion, or positive inflammation of the brain or its investing membranes in this case. Actual fracture is not at all necessary to this result. In Hope's Pathological Anatomy, we have the follow- ing statement: In several cases of fracture of the skull, and in some of injury of the scalp alone (!), I have found pus, either liquid or of a pasty consistence, between the bone and the dura mater, and adhering to both. Thus inflammation and its products on the interior of the skull proceed from injuries of the scalp alone. The injury occurring in a subject of a highly impressible and deli- cate nervous temperament, at a time in which the central organ of the nervous system was exhausted by excessive mental tension for days and nights of severe effort, carried with it impending destruction. The insidious danger of the first injury was wow only to be estimated by its threatening consequences at the stage of progress of the case when it arrived at the Mountain. All loo plainly marked by fear- ful features the true character of the effects of the assault in the Senate, and plainly showed their fatal tendencies in the condition of the man. At this stage of the case, whatever might have been, or might now be the condition of the suffering internal organs, de- bility and exhaustion of life was manifestly the clearest phenomenon visible. This was accompanied with an interrupted action of the muscles of voluntary motion, great weakness of the loins, inability to pro- tract beyond a few minutes any mental effort without pain, weight and uneasiness in the head, together with soreness in the region of the cervical vertebrae ; all of which symptoms, taken together, demonstrate a case ravaged by severe disease in the great nervous centre, and showing in that region still a highly pathological condi- tion of parts. All the symptoms being of a depressed order, ex- haustion and weakness predominating in all the functions, the clear indication in the case was to reenergize the man in every way, and by every influence. This, it seemed, would be most effectually secured by a judicious diet, mild tonic agents, constant exercise in the open air on horseback, or in a carriage, and by cessation of all active