S34 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1805. 



lence. The immediate effect of the 

 injury was great local pain ; butitwas 

 not attended with much swelling of 

 the tongue itsclf,norany other symp- 

 lorn, except that the point of the 

 tongue entirely lost its sensibility, 

 "which deprived it of the power of 

 taste: \vharever substance the patient 

 eat was equally insipid. 'I'liif alarmed 

 him very much, and induced him to 

 state to me the circumstances of his 

 case, and request my opinion. I 

 exanrnied the tongue a fortnight after 

 the accident. It had the natural ap- 

 pearance, but the tip was completely 

 insensible, and was like a piece of 

 board in his mouth, rendering the 

 act of eating a very unpleasant 

 operation. I saw him three months 

 afterwards, and it was still in nearly 

 the same state. 



From this case it appears, that 

 the tongue itself is not particularly 

 irritable; but the nerves passing 

 tlirough its substance to supply the 

 , tip, which forms tlie organ of taste, 

 are very readily deprived of their 

 natural action ; this probably arises 

 from their being softer in texture 

 than nerves in g;:neral, and, in that 

 respect, resembling those belonging 

 to the other organs of sense. 



There was another circumstance 

 in this ca?c which \cyy particularly 

 struck my attention, viz. that a 

 bruise upon the nerves of the tongue, 

 sufficient to deprive them of the 

 power of communicating sensation, 

 ■was productive of no inflammation or 

 irritation in the nervous trunk, so as 

 to induce spasms which too com- 

 monly occur from injuries to the 

 nerves belonging to voluntary mus- 

 cles, I am therefore led to believe, 

 that the nerves supplying an organ 

 of sense, are not so liable to such 

 effects as those w hich belong to the 

 other parts of the body. 



The small degree of mischief whieli 

 was produced, and the readiness 

 with which the nerves had their 

 communication completely cut off, 

 were to me new facts, and encou- 

 raged me in the following case of 

 fungous excrescence from the tongue, 

 which bled so j)rofusely as at times 

 to endanger the patient's life, and 

 never allowed him to arrive at a 

 state of tolerable health, to attempt 

 removing the part by ligature. 



John Weymouth, eight years of 

 age, was admitted into St. George's 

 hospital, on the '24th of December, 

 1800, on account of a fungous ex- 

 crescence on the right side of the an- 

 terior part of the tongue, which ex- 

 tended nearly from the outer edge, 

 to the middle line at the tip. It ap- 

 ])eared, from the account of his re- 

 lations, that the origin of this fun- 

 gous existed at his birth, and had 

 been increasing ever since. He had 

 been a year and a half under the 

 care of the late Mr. Cruikshank, 

 who had removed the excrescence, 

 by ligature, round i(s base; but, 

 when the ligature dropped off, a 

 violent harnorrhage took place, 

 and the excrescence gradually re- 

 turned. Attempts were made to 

 destroy it, by caustic, but ha;morr- 

 hage always followed the separation 

 of the sloughs ; so that, after ten 

 trials, this mode m'^s found ineffec- 

 tual. It was also removed by the 

 knife, ten different times, but always 

 returned. 



From this historj" I was led to 

 believe, that the only mode of re- 

 moving the disease, was taking out 

 the portion of the tongue upon which 

 it grew. This was a case in which 

 I felt myself warranted in making 

 an attempt out of the common line 

 of practice, to give the patient a 

 chance of recovery • and, from the 



preceding 



