Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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is the effect of correct treatment; for while the muscular hyper- esthesia, which is manifested by pain, is always removable, nothing can be more obstinate or tenacious of its own peculiar display, than the fierce twinges of true neuralgia. Finally, whenever we observe very acute pain to be induced by simple pressure of the finger on a muscular part of the body exhibiting no traces of inflammation, we may, from this very sign alone, diagnose the presence of that peculiar state of the system termed hysterical, with a very great degree of certainty. Whenever we are in doubt in these cases, we have only to gently rub with the end of the finger, for instance, on the upper end of some of the recti muscles in order to become perfectly con- vinced. Indeed, hysterical myosalgia, in some of the various forms here noticed, is, in fact, one of the most marked symptoms of hysteria, (to our own mind, though it may not always be best to declare it,) for, as it is almost never absent, it may itself be set down as a characteristic mark of this peculiar state of the system. Observation has, of late, fairly proved that it is rare not to find in these patients this peculiar muscular hyperesthe- sia, either at the epigastric region, or high up on the back, or low down on the bowels, or sides, and that particularly on the left side; and, in a very great majority of cases, it appears in all these situations at once ; and every female presenting this almost stereotyped series of symptoms may be most positively declared (or, perhaps, more prudently, thought,') hysterical. From what has now been said upon the high authority of Dr. Briquet, we fear it will be well nigh inferred that " muscular hyperassthesia" is limited to the female sex, and to cases of hysteria. By no means is this true. Most marked, distressing, and protracted cases of this malady in gentlemen of the pro- fessions, in those of close business habits, and those especially in the higher walks of life, are as familiar to the author as the class just delineated, and are found quite as amenable to right treatment, and, by far, less likely to relapse. Nor, indeed, to my mind, are all the cases that present in females (in this coun- try) to be put down either as hysterical, or in any way con- nected with uterine deviation, as necessarily so. It is my own