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
2. Systematic lesions of the kinesodic system of the oblongata, on the
other hand, are often positively recognizable during the patient's
life.
(_a_) The most strictly systematic and most frequent of these lesions
is that of secondary (Wallerian) degeneration of the pyramids, the
prolongation of the cerebral motor tract. This morbid change gives
rise to no distinct bulbar symptoms, and it can only be diagnosticated
inferentially or inclusively by determining the existence of secondary
degeneration of the entire pyramidal tract, from the occurrence of
hemiplegia followed by contracture and increased reflexes. If the
phenomena present be those of double spastic hemiplegia, there is
surely degeneration of both pyramids.
(_b_) A systematic lesion affects the nuclei (origins) of the facial,
hypoglossal, pneumogastric, spinal accessory, and the motor root of
the trigeminus nerves, giving rise to a classical symptom-group. The
symptoms thus produced are exclusively (?) motor and trophic,
consisting of progressively increasing paresis, with atrophy of the
muscles about the lips {80} and cheeks, the intrinsic lingual muscles,
the laryngeal and pharyngeal muscles. Later, the masseters, temporals,
and pterygoids are sometimes involved; and, finally, extremely rapid
action of the heart with pneumonic symptoms indicates the gravest
extension of the morbid process. An early symptom in such cases is
abnormal salivation. These affections, generally designated as
varieties of bulbar paralysis, subacute or chronic, are usually
readily recognized intra vitam, and recent discoveries in morbid
anatomy have enabled us to correctly diagnosticate the seat of the
lesion in its various extensions. The laryngeal paralysis represents
disintegration (atrophy) of ganglion-cells in the bulbar origin of the
spinal accessory nerve; lingual atrophic paralysis indicates the same
lesion in the nuclei of the hypoglossal nerves; the labio-buccal
symptoms are produced by lesion of the facial nerve nucleus (inferior
facial nucleus of older writers); the paralysis of the muscles of
mastication is due to extension of cell-degeneration to the motor
nucleus of the trigeminus in the pons; and the final cardio-pulmonary
symptoms indicate an extension of the lesion into the sensory (?)
origin of the pneumogastric nerves.
It is evident that this systematic lesion of the oblongata is the
equivalent or analogue of the various acute and chronic lesions of the
anterior horns of the spinal cord, described supra, and in practice we
sometimes find these bulbar and spinal lesions associated: progressive
muscular atrophy of the extremities and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
being complicated with bulbar paralysis.
B. FOCAL LESIONS OF THE MEDULLA OBLONGATA, as at present known, occur
mostly in the kinesodic system, but may also involve several fasciculi
and nuclei at one time. The symptoms of such lesions are grouped in
two principal types:
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