ECZEMA 



247 



of this latter occurrence seeming to be that it was due to 

 invasion, by the same materies morbi, of a contiguous 

 set of motor-fibre channels, at a certain point in the distri- 

 bution of the implicated nerve trunk, where the continuity 

 of the common inter-neurilemmar spaces, and their con- 

 tained fluid, was maintained along the common sheath, 

 enclosing both the affected sensory and motor fibres, thus 

 proving that here a common cause has been productive of 

 two forms of morbid nervine processes, leading to results 

 quite different in character, in accordance with the anatomi- 

 cal nature and functions of the parts involved, the result 

 in the one case being an eruption (cutaneous), and in the 

 other a paralysis (muscular). 



The muscular paralysis, above mentioned, continued for 

 a few weeks, after which it slowly disappeared, apparently 

 with the absorption, neutralisation, or elimination of the 

 materies morbi, the cutaneous phenomena also slowly 

 disappearing meanwhile. 



The simultaneous occurrence of two such diverse 

 morbid processes, as the results of the action of one virus, 

 or materies morbi, opens a somewhat novel, but wide, 

 field of investigation in the etiology and pathology, as well 

 as the therapeutics of disease, and promises important aid 

 in the work of grouping and classification of the morbid 

 entities with which medical science has to deal. 



In concluding our remarks on this case, which terminated 

 in complete recovery, we would claim that undoubtedly 

 the source of the local disturbance, and disease, was to be 

 found within the cerebro-spinal cavity, amid the fluid with 

 which it is pervaded, and that a chemical, if not bacterial, 

 sepsis of that fluid took place, eventuating in its overflow, 

 into a limited number of the inter-neurilemmar spaces, 

 leading out of, and continuous with, that cavity, and the 

 subsequent invasion of the textures in which they hap- 

 pened to terminate, and to which they were distributed. 

 An eczema and a paralysis are thus parts of the same 

 disease, or, more exactly, they constitute parts of one 

 disease, of which they are symptoms, the full and true 

 nature of which disease is still to be discovered. That the 

 gouty constitution underlay it we have already indicated, 

 but what that really is, and how much it means, we are yet 



