A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 5 : $b Diseases of the nervous system
Science
A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 5 : $b Diseases of the nervous system
Medicine -- Practice
(_d_) Various combinations of the above lesions occur, and may be
recognized positively during life: (1) Combined sclerosis of the
posterior columns and of the crossed pyramidal fasciculi (3 and 10),
indicated by ataxia with paralysis, absence of patellar reflex,
tendency to contracture, pains, and anæsthesia less marked than in
typical posterior spinal sclerosis. This symptom-group is usually
found in children; it is pre-eminently a family disease, and is known
as Friedreich's disease. Similar cases also occur in adults as a
strictly personal disease. (2) Secondary degeneration of the pyramidal
tract (10 and 11), with more or less localized atrophy of cells in the
anterior horns (9) coexists in two forms: First, in a few cases of
cerebral hemiplegia with contracture, and pathological atrophy of
various muscles on the paralyzed side; second, as a distinctly spinal
bilateral affection, characterized by a spastic or tetanoid state of
the lower extremities, and a mixture of atrophic paralysis (vide
(_a_)), with contracture in the arms and hands. This latter form is
the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis of Charcot.
SECOND QUESTION.—BEING GIVEN SYMPTOMS INDICATING A TOTAL TRANSVERSE
LESION OF THE SPINAL CORD, ONE INVOLVING ITS VARIOUS SYSTEMS AT A
CERTAIN LEVEL, TO DETERMINE THE ELEVATION OR FRONTO-CAUDAL SITUATION
OF THE LESION.
This question is usually easy of solution by the following method:
Since a transverse lesion of the spinal cord gives rise to both motor
and sensory symptoms of horizontal, paraplegic distribution caudad of
the lesion, the first thing to do is to determine accurately the upper
level of the symptom, either the line of anæsthesia or the limit of
paralysis. The former is always much more definite than the latter,
and usually serves as the guide to diagnosis, indicating accurately
the uppermost part of the lesion. In the thorax the levels of sensory
and motor symptoms nearly coincide, but in the extremities the
operation of Van der Kolk's law of distribution of motor and sensory
fibres of nerve-trunks must be borne in mind, although it does not
apply as strictly in this case as in nerve lesions strictly speaking.
Gowers's diagram will prove very serviceable in making a diagnosis of
transverse lesions, and will also prove of use in the study of
vertebral injury and disease, as it indicates with sufficient accuracy
the relation between vertebræ (spinous processes) and segments of the
spinal cord. (Vide Fig. 2.)
The following are the principal transverse localizations of disease
which are usually recognized during life by the above procedure:
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