Respiratory drill is an admirable method of procuring this result; it
acts in the same way as any of the other exercises. Its use is not
confined to tics of speech or of respiration, for thoracic muscles are
involved in tic much more frequently than is commonly supposed. By
resort to this technique Madet cured an expiratory hiccough[228] in a
man of forty-six, who was afflicted in addition with twitches of head,
trunk, and hands.
Systematized exercises have of course the advantages of exercise in
general; motor, sensory, and psychical functions alike are stimulated
and regulated, and tend to become normal. In particular, muscular
exercise is a striking way of disciplining volition. Accordingly, we
never fail to prescribe such pastimes as gymnastics, in any of its
forms, rowing, fencing, cycling, lawn tennis, etc.; games which demand
attention, skill, and decision are useful auxiliaries, and manual
occupations of a more delicate nature ought not to be forgotten,
provided they require of the patient a certain amount of immobility.
Every case, needless to say, must be treated on its merits, but the
general indications we have supplied can easily be modified to suit the
individual.
The various procedures directed, under different names, to the
suppression of tic by re-education, are all modelled on the same plan.
Köster attributes the disease to exhaustion of higher co-ordinating
centres, and counsels their reinforcement by appropriate exercise.
Oppenheim, in his _Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten_, adduces evidence of
the value of what he calls _Hemmungstherapie_, which is merely an
application of the principles and therapeutic rules laid down by
Brissaud in 1893, and described by one of us in 1897, apropos of mental
torticollis. The same may be said of the line of treatment pursued by
Dubois, which appears to be based on the pathogenic interpretation given
by Oettinger,[229] according to whom the brain of tic patients is
incapable of conserving the image of sustained immobility, and thereby
loses the habit of voluntary immobilisation. The essence of treatment,
therefore, consists in habituating the subject to rest motionless like a
statue in a position conducive to repose, and for a given time.
As has been already remarked, the polymorphism of tics is such that the
plan of treatment selected must be necessarily elastic if it is to be
altered to suit individual cases. What is the point in enjoining
absolute immobility on a patient whose blepharotic is never in evidence
unless he is walking about?
* * * * *
We may now proceed to narrate the details of various cases of tic
treated by the combined method of disciplinary movements and immobility,
taking the history of O. as our first example.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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