Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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the body itself, it has its places of preference, which it observes with so much constancy and regularity as to serve for one of the diagnostic signs of hysteria. The following may be marked as its favorite seats, and succession of order of attack: — I. Cephalalgia. — When the hyperassthesia affects the muscles of the head, it constitutes what has been termed cephalalgia. So common is this hi hysterical patients that, out of three hundred and fifty-six of these, it was found habitually, or at least very frequently, in three hundred of them, as affecting especially the frontal and temporal regions of the head, and, in at least nine tenths of the cases, as having its scat in the fleshy portions of the muscles. It is frequently pulsatile; at other times, lancinating; and continuing even during rest in bed, which distinguishes it from the anemic and chlorotic headache, which, on the contrary, is hardly felt except during motion. (See p. 420, & App. I), 2.) II. Rachialgia. — HypersBsthesia affecting the muscles of the back has been long recognized, (in men, sometimes, as well as in women.) So common is it, indeed, in the hysterical patient that M. Briquet found it absent in only five out of three hundred and eleven cases. According to the details he gives, it is found five times more frequent at the lower part of the back than at the upper part, and as many times more frequent on the left side than on the right side of the spinal column. It occupies, in general, a space corresponding to about four or six vertebrae. It usually appears here subsequently to the epigastralgia, and may then exist, in various degrees, from a mere uneasiness, scarcely perceptible, unless pressure be made at, and along the side of the spine, over the severest suffering, and consequent source of dis- turbance of important functions. When intense, it becomes more fixed, and is then one of the " symptoms " of hysteria that is most difficult to remove, the pain recurring from time to time from the slightest cause. Its diagnosis is easy, by means of pressure made on the muscles at either side of the spine, and a little distance from it, until found, and then by observing its usual connection with epigastralgia, and other symptoms of hy- steria. In .spite of this, however, its presence has frequently given rise to the most serious errors, and a frequent one among