Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble itAnstie, Francis Edmund
Science
Neuralgia and the diseases that resemble it
Anstie, Francis Edmund
Neuralgia
advanced life; but, except the latter, neither of them displayed any
symptoms of disordered biliary secretion; and the diagnosis (as to
situation, for the character of the attacks was manifestly neuralgic)
rested mainly on the fact that the pain radiated to the shoulder.
There remains to be noticed one clinical feature of the disease, which,
I believe, is characteristic; namely, the peculiar mental depression
which attended all the cases I have seen, but was most marked in the two
in which jaundice occurred. In the girl above referred to, the apathy,
during the period when there was jaundice but no pain, was even
alarming; it reminded one of the mental state in commencing catalepsy;
during the painful stages it was more like the gloom of suicidal
melancholia. Of course, the acute mental anxiety which this patient had
suffered would account for a good deal of this; but the symptom was as
distinct, though less severe, in the case of an elderly lady, whom I
have attended on another occasion for migraine; here there was no
recognizable source of anxiety; and, on the other hand, there was no
reason to suspect the retention of bile-elements in the blood. It seems,
therefore, as if an essentially depressing influence on the mind was
excited by hepatic neuralgia; or else, that emotional causes are the
chief source of the malady.
_Neuralgia of the Heart._--If there be any hesitation in treating this
disease as exactly conterminous with angina pectoris, it can, I think,
be only reasonably justified on two grounds: In the first place, it may
be urged that acute pain of the neuralgic type is not always present in
angina pectoris; and, secondly, it may be urged that many cases of
painful neurosis of the heart have been observed, in which the
recurrence of pain with some amount of cardiac embarrassment has gone on
for years, whereas the popular conception of true angina almost
necessarily involves rapid fatality.
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