Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble itAnstie, Francis Edmund
Science
Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble it
Anstie, Francis Edmund
Neuralgia
refused to yield to iron, improved at once as the mercury began to
relieve the pains. The eruption disappeared simultaneously.
It is the later pains of syphilis, however, that are most frequently
confounded with neuralgia, and occasionally with very disastrous
results. These pains, which are the precursors of the formation of true
nodes, frequent the same localities as those affected by the earlier
pains; they may exist in considerable severity for days, or even for
many weeks, before any node-formation can be detected. The situation in
which, of all others, they are likely to be mistaken for neuralgia is
the scalp or face, especially when a single spot is affected on one
side, and in the situation of one of the usual foci of trigeminal or
occipital neuralgia. I have personally known the mistake to be made with
syphilitic affections causing pain, respectively, in the superciliary
region, in the malar bone, the jaw near the mental foramen, and the
parietal eminence.
The possibility of mistaking tertiary syphilitic pain for neuralgia is
fraught with such grave dangers, that we ought to be constantly and most
vigilantly on the watch against it. But most especially is this the case
when the pain is situated in some part of the cranium, as the parietal
or temporal eminences, the mastoid process, or the prominences of the
occipital bone. For it must be remembered that the same process, which
forms syphilitic nodes upon the external surface of bones, or within
bony canals, can produce them on the lining membrane of the skull, with
most serious consequences, should the symptoms be neglected or
misunderstood.
The pains produced by nodes upon the internal surface of the cranium are
usually of a very intense character, and are mostly continuous, though
aggravated from time to time, especially at night. Where syphilitic
inflammation is diffused over a considerable portion of the meninges, it
is certain very quickly to produce symptoms which can hardly fail to
apprise us of the gravity of the affection; there will be decided and
rapidly increasing impairment of memory, and general cloudiness of
intellect, tending toward complete imbecility, the special senses will
be greatly interfered with or lost, and muscular paralysis will be
developed. But in the case of a more limited syphilitic affection of the
dura mater, pain, of the kind already described, may be for some days
the only very noticeable symptom. The following is an instance:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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