. Medical and surgical therapy. a large number of centres of military neurologyobservers have been struck by the frequency of certainconditions, such as fixed attitudes and contractureswhich differ from the usual run of cases and which ithas been impossible to classify. Are they examples of hysterical manifestations, orare they phenomena of another kind ? Such is thequestion which interests all these writers, and whichthey answer in different ways. It is quite obviousthat they have no conclusive criteria to support theirimpression. Most of them have been surprised by the HISTORICAL 507 persist
. Medical and surgical therapy. a large number of centres of military neurologyobservers have been struck by the frequency of certainconditions, such as fixed attitudes and contractureswhich differ from the usual run of cases and which ithas been impossible to classify. Are they examples of hysterical manifestations, orare they phenomena of another kind ? Such is thequestion which interests all these writers, and whichthey answer in different ways. It is quite obviousthat they have no conclusive criteria to support theirimpression. Most of them have been surprised by the HISTORICAL 507 persistency of the symptoms and their great resistanceto psychotherapeutic measures. Although some forthis reason reject the hypothesis of hysteria, not oneof them compares these cases with the descriptionsgiven by earlier writers. The study of a patient presenting a type of paralysishitherto undescribed gave a new direction to our re-searches. The case was met of a man suffering fromflaccid paralysis of the hand and fingers following. Fig. 4.—Hypotonus of the extensors of the hand following perfora-tion of the hand by a bullet without lesion of the nerve trunks[v. PI. IV, p. .324). a bullet wound of the second dorsal interosseous disorders and a pronounced hypothermiawere found. There was a little diffuse and non-sys-tematised atrophy of the muscles of the hand, forearm,and upper arm without The tendon reflexes onthe affected side were preserved. The hypothesisof an organic affection of the centres or peripheralnerves had to be abandoned in the absence of any signcharacteristic of such lesions. Were they, then, to beregarded as hysterical or simulated phenomena, assome had supposed ? On subjecting the patient to a methodical examina-tion, in the search for some sign which would help us Plate IIIFlaccid paralysis of the left hand and fingers with PARESIS OF the MOVEMENTS OF THE FOREARM (131) which OCCUrred five months after a wound of the second dorsal inteross
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpub, booksubjecttherapeutics
