The Mother's Manual of Children's DiseasesWest, Charles
Science
The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases
West, Charles
Pediatrics -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
=Paralysis, or Palsy.=--When speaking of St. Vitus's dance I said that
there was a partial loss of power in the limbs as well as an inability
to control their movements. After a fit of convulsions, or an epileptic
seizure, power over some limb is often lost for a time which may vary
from a few minutes to some hours. In the course of some serious diseases
of the brain, one of the manifestations of the mischief is the
impairment or the loss of power over one arm or leg, rarely over both;
and lastly, that terrible disease diphtheria is often followed by a
paralysis so general that the patient is sometimes for days unable to
move even a finger, although the condition may eventually pass away.
There is, however, a very _real paralysis_ which occurs sometimes in
infants and young children. It comes on for the most part quite
suddenly, often unaccompanied by any sign of brain disorder, but tending
nevertheless to issue in great permanent impairment of the power over
the affected limb or limbs, and eventually to interfere with their
growth and thus to produce serious deformity.
It is in general impossible to assign any distinct exciting cause for
the affection, though the fact that in two-thirds of the cases it occurs
between the ages of six months and three years, proves it to be in some
way intimately associated with teething. The oldest child in whom I have
ever seen it was aged between seven and eight years, and the youngest a
little under six months. It is of excessive rarity for the arm alone to
be affected, but it is by no means unusual for the legs alone to be
paralysed; though in the majority of instances power is lost on one side
only, the leg and arm being both involved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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