Citation

Bridges VR. The Chicago medical journal and examiner 1879; 38(1): 48-50.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1879)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

37616881

PMCID

PMC9817656

Abstract

On the morning of May 12, 1878, I was called to see a little girl, aged 9 years, who--as the messenger stated--was having spasms. Supposing it to be a case of convulsions from intestinal irritation, or other ordinary cause, I made no extra preparations, but at once obeyed the summons. On my arrival I was quite surprised to find myself confronted with a very serious case--such as I had never seen before. By following a proper line of inquiry I was not long in arriving at a diagnosis, which, notwithstanding the protestations of the family to the contrary, was fully confirmed in a few hours by finding an old strychnia bottle with a few grains of the salt yet in it, and which the child afterward admitted she had handled. Any esti mate of the amount she took, of course would be conjectural, and I will not give a detailed history of the symptoms. Suffice it to say that for four hours before I saw her, and for nearly ten hours afterward, she was in a continuous and persistent spasm, from head to foot, with an alarming and distressing opisthotonos, ren dered all the more painful from the fact that she was entirely con scious of her suffering, while any effort to relieve her by the slightest touch, or causing her to swallow, only aggravated her condition, by apparently exciting every muscle to increase its tension. But the treatment adopted is the main object I have in view in reporting the case. I first prescribed.03 of morphia and applied hot water to the spine, but fearing the morphia alone would not be sufficient, I sent back to my office (5 miles) for other reme dies, in the meantime continuing the hot water to the spine and, repeating the morphia every half hour. One and a half hours elapsed and, nothing gained, I then gave:

Flu. ex. belladonna............................................ 2
Flu. ex. c. indie................................................... 2
Morph, sulph....................................................... 03
Elix. simpl............................................................32 M. Teaspoonful every hour alternated with the following :
Potassic bromide................................................. 6
Hydr. chloral,..................................................... 3
Elix. simpl............................................................. 32 M. Teaspoonful every hour.

This, though somewhat heroic, as I thought, for a small child, failed to relieve the patient as promptly as I desired, and I had almost despaired of her life, when an expression in one of Brown- S^quard's lectures occurred to me, in which he affirms that " Spas modic action is due to unrest or a morbid activity of the cells of gray matter in the spinal cord and base of the brain, which re sults in the destruction of tissue and the exhaustion of nerve force," and he suggests as a remedy, friction, bandaging, or some other force or irritant applied to the extremities...

Language: en