Clinical manual for the study of medical cases. / edited by James Finlayson.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical manual for the study of medical cases. / edited by James Finlayson. 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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    associated with aphasia and gross lesions of the temporo- sphenoidal lobe, the olfactory nerve is implicated on the same side as the cerebral lesion. Perversions of smell and the associated perversions of taste, as distinguished from a pure loss of these senses, are almost entirely limited to cases of insanity, or other serious affections of the brain and nervous centres, including hysteria. Such perversions are, no doubt, intimately associated with the delusions from which the insane sometimes suffer when they imagine that they are themselves foetid and putrefying, or that they are asked to eat filth, or that attempts are made to poison their food. The occurrence of “a bad smell” consti- tutes sometimes the aura ushering in an epileptic fit. Occa- sionally a patient is conscious of a bad smell, really present in his case, say from gangrene of lung or foetid eructations in dyspepsia, when the attendants may have a difficulty in recognising its presence, because of its only coming occasionally with certain coughs or eructations. The use of certain medicines, as phosphorus and some metallic salts, may likewise produce, at times, disagreeable sensations in the organs of smell and taste. The use of bismuth may give rise (probably from the presence of an impurity) to an odour of garlic in the breath which may be perceived by the patient and also more commonly by the attendants. Chronic discharge from the nose is sometimes simply catarrhal, but it is usually foetid (ozsena), and often depends on disease of the bones which can be detected by the probe. Such a discharge, in children, from one nostril only, is always suggestive of the presence of a foreign body in the nose. Fcetor from the nose may be distinguished from foetor due to gangrene of lung, or from that of sore throat, disordered stomach, carious teeth, etc., by testing the breath while the mouth and the nostrils are closed alternately. ‘ Punning from the nose ” is one of the features of coryza or catarrh of the nasal passages and sinuses connected with them : it is a leading feature of a “ cold in the head,” and also