| OCR Text |
Show 30' t or '1' returns. or TUMOURS. it so on dissection; in the same manner, I have found suppuration near the thyroid hole of the pelvis, attended with pain on the inside of the thigh and knee. So we ascertain the seat of disease to be in the loins from the numbness of the thigh, and retraction of the testicle ; and further from the knowledge of the peculiar nature of the pain from the injury of a nerve, I have been able to ascertain that a disease of the arm did not proceed from the injury of the nerve, when others thought it so evident that they sought to cut the nerve across. In wounds too we shall often be able to ascertain the precise track of the ball, and the very artery wounded, by attending to the loss of sense of certain parts. If a ball has made its track through the axilla I consult the sensation of the finger and arm, to tell me where it has passed; and so indeed of the wounds of the pelvis, something definite may be learned d). .i a axe-aim mt». mm .2 ' 7 1" when we find that parts are rendered insensible which are supplied by the anterior, middle, or great posterior nerve. If my reader asks how such a representation of the necessity of attending to the distribution of the nerves comes into this place, my apology is in the following case, which drew my attention to the subject :- About three years before I saw the subject of the follow-ing case ; he had fallen from the side of a ship. It happen ed in this way :--Seeing his fellow-workman falling, he threw himself forward to break his fall, and succeeded; \" frame by continued watching. This pain was of a peculiar kind--it was confined to the bottom of the foot and was like an intense burning, while there was not the slightest discolouration or swelling in the place. Often he would rise at night from his bed and stand on the cold stones, or plunge his foot into warm water or cold water, or into both alter» nately. He now sought relief in a public hospital, and the attend ants there disconcerted with the strangeness of the symptom. which they did not comprehend, put him, as is usual on such occasions, on a course of mercury; but this trial of a medicinledid no good, and he went home. But still 5qu fering continually, he was induced after a lapse of some months to return to the hospital, and was again put on a more severe and a longer continued course of mercury than at first. By the time this was over he had suffered continually for two years, and was reduced to a skeleton, and he was far gone in hectic. When I saw him, he gave me this account, and then con- tinued to complain of the extreme pain in the sole of his foot. He told me too that he had a strange numbness of the leg when he sat down. On examining into this circumstance. which I thought would lead to some explanation of the more prominent symptom, I found a tumour in the ham, but in which when pressed gave no particular pain, but rather a doing this, he fell himself; for he was caught by the ham on a projecting bolt in the side of the ship, over which he turn- sense of prickling numbness down the leg. The tumour was to the feeling of a bony hardness. I conjectured that ed, and hung suspended. He suffered much from the bruise on the back of the thigh, but in a short time it got entirely well. Some time after this, he began to be much troubled with {.m‘Vfi'f o‘rpw‘w'ehnrw-O -g Ma -< 23:) a pain in his foot. This pain was in a part not likely to procure him much sympathy, and he suffered much and long without attempting to procure assistance, or only such as the extremity of pain will put a man upon for the time. But. the pain continued to increase from day to day, until. it totally unlitted him for labour, exhausting and wasting his there was some tumour pressing and wedging upon the popliteal nerve, and that this injury to the nerve in its course was referable by the patient's feelings to the extremity and final distribution of the nerve. I thought of an operation, yet I was deterred from it by the dying state of the poor man, who now suffered but indirectly from the disease of the leg, and in all probability death was no longer to be avoided by the removal of the original cause. I thought that he might be brought round to have some strength, but within the week he died. ‘ 1 *"r-"rw'r""tii V'ON' Witt |
