Dr. Mac Culloch on Fevers, 57 



" Neuralgia is a pain occupying some point in the nerves of 

 the face among others ; and it may occupy any point in any large 

 branch which supplies the teeth, among other nerves of the 

 face. The pain which it produces is the same pain, whatever bo 

 the nerve or part of that nerve affected. The pain of toothach 

 is the same pain, and it is seated in an ultimate extremity of the 

 branch which supplies the teeth, or in more. If the pain is not 

 neuralgia, then it must follow, that although every other point 

 of that nerve, when pained, is suffering from neuralgia, let that 

 pain exist any where, from the brain even to the extremity, the 

 very last, ultimate point thus suffering, suffers from a different 

 disease. Reductio ad absurdum." " Or," as he remarks in 

 another place, " if the inferior maxillary nerve is affected with 

 neuralgia in one point, let us pursue that as a mathematical 

 fluent. It proceeds along the nerve till it arrives at the place 

 where the rfimification is given off to a tooth: it proceeds even 

 into the tooth, and the name is then changed to toothach. But 

 change of name is not change of disease : or, if it be so, let 

 the opposing assertion define the point in this fluxion, where the 

 cessation takes place, and a new element of equation must be 

 adopted, or where a new disease commences." 



It is further remarked, that neuralgia and toothach 

 agree in being intermittent and periodical ; that if toothach 

 is irregular, so is neuralgia, and from the same causes ; 

 that both are attended with a similar, obscure, periodical 

 fever ; that both alternate with simple intermittent, by 

 relapses and by paroxysms ; that both present all the same 

 types as common intermittent does, and that a double tertian 

 may consist of a paroxysm of toothach on one day, and of 

 simple fever on the other. Further, the same heat, excite- 

 ment of the parts, diffused pain, and irritability attend 

 both ; the two are united or simultaneous, or either passes 

 into the other, or else it becomes impossible to pronounce 

 whether the pain is neuralagia or toothach : while, also, 

 they alternate in such a manner that what was neuralgia on 

 one day, or even in one hour or minute, may be toothach 

 at another, or the next. And, moreover, the case of tooth- 

 ach from caries is precisely neuralgia from the injury of a 

 nerve ; this being the most common of the occasional causes, 

 so far from affording an argument against this view ; while, 

 lastly, they are both cured by the same remedies, among 

 which, perhaps, the most remarkable circumstance is their 

 cure by means of charms. 



Such are the proofs: but as we cannot afford space to 

 enter upon the several interesting details in which all the 

 varieties of this disease are described, traced, and connected 



