Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble it / by Francis E. Anstie.

  • Anstie, Francis Edmund, 1833-1874.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble it / by Francis E. Anstie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    give rise to violent pain, which is exceedingly apt to be taken for the pain either of gall-stone, of renal calculus, or else of some abdominal neuralgia. In cases, therefore, where there is any possibility that accumulation is the cause of pain, it is highly desirable to commence with a dose of castor-oil and laudanum, followed up, if needful, by the administration of a large warm-water enema, given through an O'Beirne's tube. The most violent and recurrent attacks of pain in the renal region, the flank, the abdomen, or the groin, will sometimes be instantly cured by such means, sufficiently proving the non-neuralgic character of the complaint. I have elsewhere explained that the impaction of a renal or an hepatic calculus, in the ureter or the ductus choledochus, may set up a true neuralgia in persons with the requisite con- genital predisposition. The passage of renal or hepatic calculi may give rise to symptoms falsely suggesting neuralgia, which require just to be mentioned here. But there is no need to dwell much upon the diagnosis, for the passage of renal or hepatic calculi has always attendant symptoms and features of constitutional history, which ought to preserve the physician from mistake. The sensation of constriction, of nausea and vomiting, the faintness approaching to collapse, the persistent and constantly increasing severity of the pain up to the moment at which mechanical relief occurs, to say nothing of other phenomena, are distinctive to the skilled observer, and, when taken in conjunction with the history of past attacks, if any, will always prevent mistakes. In the few cases which might still be doubtful it will be well to try the the efl'ect of a relaxing dose of chloroform, which, in the case of calculus, will often put an end to the paroxysm at once and finally. CHAPTER XI. DYSPEPTIC HEADACHE. A final word or two must be given to the distinction between neuralgia of the head and an affection so utterly different that it is surprising that they sho^ild be so frequently confounded. One constantly hears medical men speak of sick headache (migraine) as if it were the same thing as headache from indi- gestion; and, unfortunately, they often treat migraine upon this confused and erroneous notion, doing no little mischief thereby. But, although migraine, already amply described, is entirely independent of the state of digestion, and its stomach-phe-