Mother's Remedies Part 68

Symptoms.--They usually occur on the return to the surface of the water, or after a few hours have pa.s.sed. There are pains in the ears and joints and nose-bleed. The pulse is slow and strong. Neuralgia of the stomach and vomiting often occur. Paralysis of one side, or of the lower extremities may occur. Brain symptoms may develop and death may follow in a few hours.

In most cases recovery takes place in a few days or weeks.

Treatment.--Persons who are engaged in such work should change very gradually from a great depth to the surface, and should not go into the outer air suddenly.

MYELITIS.--Myelitis is an inflammation of the spinal cord.

Causes.--It may occur at any age, and is more common in male than in female. The exciting causes are prolonged exposure to severe colds, too great mental and physical exertion, s.e.xual excess, blows, bleeding into the cord, alcoholic excess, acute infectious diseases, syphilis, etc.

Symptoms.--These depend upon the location of the inflammation and the severity. The onset may be sudden or gradual--when it is sudden, there may be a chill followed by a fever of 101 to 103 degrees--general feeling of illness, loss of appet.i.te, with coated tongue and constipation. There may be over-sensitiveness to pain and touch. Pain may radiate from the back into the limbs, with numbing and tingling of the limbs. The urine may be retained or may dribble away. Usually there is obstinate constipation.

There is frequently the feeling of a band around the body. Paralysis may follow in the lower extremities and higher up, sometimes, depending upon how high up in the cord the inflammation exists. This paralysis may cause no motion of the limbs or produce an exaggerated contracting of the affected muscles, the knees being drawn up on the abdomen and the heels touching the b.u.t.tocks.

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Recovery.--Chances for recovery depend upon the cause. Most cases are chronic and may last for years.

Treatment.--Treatment depends also upon the cause. Rest in bed; counter-irritation, wet cupping, with care on account of bed sores. A water-bed from the first may prevent bed-sores. The urine must be drawn if it is retained. The medical treatment must be carefully given and a physician of experience should be obtained.

LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA. Tabes dorsalis. Posterior Spinal Sclerosis).--A hardening (sclerosis) affecting the posterior parts of the spinal cord and characterized by incoordination, which means a condition where a person is unable to produce voluntary muscular movements; for instance, of the legs, etc., loss of deep reflexes to bend them back; disturbances of nutrition and sensation, and various affections of sight.

Causes.--This is a disease of adult life, persons under twenty-five being rarely affected, and is more common in men than women (ten to one).

Sometimes children suffering from hereditary syphilis have it. The chief predisposing cause is syphilis which precedes it in from seventy to eighty-five of the cases according to various authorities. Exposure to cold and wet, s.e.xual and alcoholic excesses, mineral poisoning, and great physical exertion also exciting causes.

Symptoms.--These are numerous. They appear in succession and with the same regularity.

Stages.--Stages of pain; the stage of ataxia, peculiar gait; and the state of paralysis.

1. Prodromal or forerunning; the stage of pain.--This consists of lightning-like pains in the lower extremities, numbness, formication (feeling of ants, etc., crawling), sensation of dead extremities; pins and needles in the soles of the feet and fingers, coldness, itching of arms and s.c.r.o.t.u.m or other parts, a sensation of constriction around the chest, headache, pain in the small of the back and loins of an aching character may occur. These symptoms may const.i.tute the only evidence of locomotor ataxia and last for years; but sooner or later there are added absence of knee cap bone reflex (knee jerk), and immobility of the pupil. The loss of the knee jerk is always observed in time. The pupil fails to respond to light while it still accommodates for distance, called Argyll Roberston pupil. There may be imperfect control of the bladder with slow, dripping or hasty urination. Later the control is not imperfect, but it may be painful. Inflammation of the bladder may occur which is dangerous. There is usually obstinate constipation and loss of s.e.xual power. These symptoms may last for several months and years, and then the second stage symptoms appear.

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2. Stage of Ataxia (Disturbance of motion).--The disturbance of motion (ataxia) is very marked, especially in the lower extremities; the walking becomes difficult and uncertain; there is difficulty in rising or rapid turning; the legs are wide apart; feet lifted too high and come down too forcibly; the length of the steps is irregular, and the body is imperfectly balanced. If the patient stands with his feet together and eyes closed he begins to sway, (Romberg's symptom), which is due to a defect in controlling the muscles from impairment of sensation. There may be imperfect use of the hands in dressing, writing, etc.; lancinating pains are marked in all cases and come on in paroxysms. The pains are mostly in the legs, but also occur in the arms, head, loins, back, and trunk. Then the sense of touch is partially lost. The p.r.i.c.k of a pin may not be felt until a few seconds after being applied. This stage may last for years and remain at a "standstill;" but it is usually progressive, and advances to the third stage.

3. The stage of paralysis is marked by a gradual change to the worse, and the patient must remain in bed, because he cannot get out. The lower and sometimes the upper extremities have lost a great deal of their power of sensation: The joints, mostly the knee and hip joints show on both sides of the body a painless swelling, owing to the great quant.i.ties of watery liquid there. Dislocations and fractures occur simultaneously. Bed-sores and peculiar ulcers on the sole of the foot also occur. The urine dribbles away constantly, for all control of the bladder is lost. Death occurs from exhaustion; bedsores, inflammation of the bladder, or pneumonia coming on as a complication.

Treatment;--The only thing to do when the patient has this disease is to make him comfortable and arrest the progress of it, if possible. It is incurable, but treatment sometimes arrests the progress and at least lessens the suffering and prolongs life as long as it is worth living to them. I have given a longer description than was necessary, for I wanted men who live such fast lives to understand what it brings them for most cases are caused by syphilis. The description could have been made longer and other symptoms and complications put in. I think enough has been given and perhaps this description may deter some one from going the same road.

The Diagnosis is made at first by the fatigue, peculiar pains, loss of the knee jerk, the peculiar pupil and history of syphilis. Later it is made from the ataxia; the peculiar walk, etc., and the bladder disturbances.

HEREDITARY ATAXIA. Friedrich's Disease.--This peculiar disease is due to a degenerative disease of the posterior and lateral columns (parts) of the spinal cord, occurring in childhood, and often in several children of the same family.

Causes.--More in boys than in girls and oftener in the country districts.

Heredity is frequently a cause and it is traced to syphilis, epilepsy, alcoholism, and insanity in the ancestors. Several children of the same family may have it.

Symptoms.--In very young children it is noticed that they are slow in learning to walk; the child staggers in trying to stand or to walk; it uses its hands clumsily, and has difficulty in speaking. The movements of the hands are peculiar, the hands move like in ch.o.r.ea, the speech is slow and drawling.

Recovery.--Very doubtful, but they may last for years.

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INFANTILE PARALYSIS. (Acute Anterior Polio Myelitis).--This is an acute disease occurring almost exclusively in young children with paralysis, followed by rapid dwindling of the muscles of the parts affected by the paralysis.

Causes.--Found in children under three years old. It is more common in summer than in winter. It often follows scarlet fever, measles, and diphtheria.

Symptoms.--The onset is usually sudden; often the child is put to bed at night seemingly well and in the morning is found paralyzed in one or more limbs. High fever or chills, general feeling of illness, pain all over the body, decided brain symptoms, like delirium or convulsions and intermittent contractions of the muscles may usher in the disease. These forerunning symptoms may last a short time or for several weeks, after which the paralysis is noticed, being extensive as a rule, and affecting one, two, or all of the extremities and sometimes the muscles of the trunk. This general paralysis soon disappears being left permanently in only one extremity, chiefly in one leg. The other symptoms disappear. The paralyzed part atrophies (wastes) rapidly. The disease is very rare in adults. If the paralysis does not show a decided change within the first few months, full recovery is doubtful.

Treatment.--During the acute stage there must be absolute quiet and rest with a diet that is not stimulating, one that is easily digested; ice to the head or cold cloths, counter-irritation to the spine; electricity should be used after a few weeks. There is quite a good deal of this paralysis, and the case should receive careful attention from the start.

TASTE.--Taste-Buds.--There are three kinds of papillae or eminences on the human tongue,--the circ.u.mvallate, the fungiform and the filiform. The circ.u.mvallate are from seven to twelve in number and lie near the root of the tongue, arranged in the form of a V, with its open angle turned forward. Each one is an elevation of the mucous membrane, covered by epithelium and surrounded by a trench. On the sides of the papillae, embedded in the epithelium, are small oval bodies called taste-buds. These taste-buds consist of a sheath of flattened, fusiform cells, enclosing a number of spindle-like cells whose tapering ends are prolonged into a hair-like process. As the filaments of the gustatory nerves terminate between these rod-like cells, it is probable that they are the true sensory cells of taste.

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In the human tongue taste-buds are also found in the fungiform papillae, often seem as red dots scattered over its surface; and to an area just in front of the anterior pillar of the fauces. It is also possible that single taste-cells are scattered over the tongue, as the sense of taste exists where no taste-buds can be found.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Taste Buds.]

Many so-called tastes are really smells. This is easily proved by compressing the nostrils and attempting to distinguish by taste different articles of food.

The taste sensation is greatest when the exciting substance is at the temperature of the body. There is no perceptible sweetness to sugar when the tongue has been dipped for a half-minute in water either at the freezing temperature or warmed to 50 degrees C. Neither is there any sense of taste until the substance is dissolved by the natural fluids of the mouth, as will be seen by wiping the tongue dry and placing sugar upon it.

The four primary taste-sensations are bitter, sweet, sour and salt. These probably have separate centers and nerve fibers. Sweet and sour tastes are chiefly recognized at the front and bitter and alkaline tastes at the back of the tongue. The same substance will often excite a different sensation, according as it is placed at the front or back of the tongue.

There are also laws of contrast in taste sensations. Certain substances will enhance the flavor of another and others will destroy it. Again, certain tastes may disguise others without destroying them, as when an acid is covered with a sweet.

INSANITY. History.--The earliest reference to insanity is found in the book of Deuteronomy. Another reference is in Samuel where it speaks concerning David's cunning and successful feigning of insanity. "And he changed his behavior before them and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the door-posts of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard," Feigning insanity under distressing circ.u.mstances has been one of man's achievements throughout the centuries. It is spoken of in Ecclesiastes. Jeremiah says in regard to the wine cup: "And they shall drink and be moved and be mad." Nations also were poisoned by the wine cup, for Jeremiah says, "Babylon has been a golden cup in the Lord's hands, that made all the earth drunken. The nations have drunken of her wine, therefore the nations are mad." Greek writers speak of cases of mental unsoundness as occurring with some frequency in Greece. The inhabitants of the Roman Empire were afflicted with mental unsoundness and Nero was considered crazy. In ancient Egypt there were temples and priests for the care of the insane.

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Hippocrates, who lived four hundred years before Christ, was the first physician who seemed to have any true conception of the real nature of insanity. For many centuries later the ma.s.ses believed that madness was simply a visitation of the devil. The insane, in the time of Christ, were permitted to wander at large among the woods and caves of Palestine. The monks built the first hospital or asylum for the insane six centuries after Christ.

A hospital for the insane was established at Valencia in Spain in 1409. In 1547 the hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem was established near London and was known as "Bedlam" for a long time.

The first asylum to be run upon reform principles was St. Luke's of London, founded in 1751. About 1791 Samuel Hahnemann established an asylum for the insane at Georgenthal, near Gotha, and the law of kindness was the unvarying rule in the inst.i.tution. Hahnemann says in his Lesser Writings: "I never allow any insane persons to be punished by blows or other corporeal inflictions." Pineli struck the chains from the incarcerated insane at the Bicetre, near Paris in 1792 or 1793.

There has been a gradual tendency during the last century toward better things in the behalf of the insane. A hundred years ago they were treated with prison surroundings and prison fare. Then asylum treatment began to prevail. This means close confinement, good food, sufficient clothing and comfortable beds. Asylum care means the humane custody of dangerous prisoners. "From the asylum we move on to the hospital system of caring for the insane and this system recognizes the fact that the lunatic is a sick man and needs nursing and medical treatment in order to be cured.

Hospital treatment has been gradually introduced during the past thirty years or more," and in time it will eventually supercede asylum treatment and prison or workhouse methods in the management of the insane everywhere.

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