Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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forraly, there is excruciating pain during evacuation, and always a feeling of exhaustion for some lime after. In most of the patients, there is a peculiar expression of countenance, so strik- ing, that one who has understandingly seen many sucli cases can with tolerable certainty tell, without more minute examina- tion, what the nature of the complaint is. It is an expression of anxiety and irritability, quite different, however, from that which usually marks organic disease. Yon must not conclude, however, as is too often the case, that your patient is laboring under an incurable malady. Scarcely less characteristic of the disease than any of the preceding symptoms is the state of the mind. In all there is more or less nervousness, greatly in- creased towards night, sleeplessness, or dreams of an unpleasant nature, which is almost invariable. One lady was troubled often with spectral illusions. Professor Simpson has observed that in most of these cases that have come under his notice, there is a deficiency of memory in regard to words. The patient knows what he wishes to express, and is loquacious, but cannot find the desired expres- sion at the moment. In my own experience, I have not observed this so frequently; and certainly in very many cases it is wanting ; this is therefore not invariable. When the affec- tion has been of long duration, (and too frequently this is the case before we are consulted,) the menial irritability is very great, and perhaps confirmed; and what is more painful still, the patient's feelings and views are quite perverted and dis- torted. It is unnecessary to add, that they are miserable in themselves, and where the nature of the affection is unknown to, and due allowance not made by, their companions and friends, they are truly a cause of misery to others. They are quite sen- sible that they are not what they formerly were ; that they are changed in temper and condition for the icorse; they feel, moreover, that they have little control over their mental state, and are apt to fall into a condition of great depression and despondency. If I were to express their internal feeling in few words, I would say that " they have a mixtiire of irritability and despondency, relieved, from time to time, by happier 53