PERIPHERAL PALSY. 359 



TREATMENT. The course of the disease, which usually is favorable, 

 renders active therapeutic interference superfluous. Krukeriberg used 

 to recommend fumigation with juniper-berries. The pain in the limbs 

 and the contractions of the muscles certainly subside quite as soon 

 ander this simple treatment as under the use of other stimulating and 

 antispasmodic embrocations, and by the internal use of remedies for 

 convulsions, such as flores zinci, henbane, opium, and the like. If the 

 idiopathic muscular spasm be the effect of some grave general disease, 

 the case is different. The spasms do not then cease until the normal 

 assimilation and nutrition have once more become reestablished ; and 

 treatment must be regulated accordingly. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



PERIPHERAL PALSY. 



THE term palsy acinesis of the province of the cerebro-spinal 

 nerves is applied to a morbid condition, in which the motor fibres are 

 no longer acted upon by volition, so that the muscles cannot be made 

 to contract at will. Derangements of the voluntary motion having 

 another origin, especially those caused by disease of the bones and 

 joints, are not counted as palsy. Myopathic palsy shall be treated of 

 hereafter. 



In treating of disease of the brain, we have already described that 

 class of paralysis proceeding from destruction or derangement of the 

 grand centre of volition, whereby the motor impulse to the peripheral 

 nerves is arrested. Under the same heading, also, we have treated of 

 those palsies due to general derangement of the cerebral circulation 

 and nutrition, in which, the entire mental function having become arrest- 

 ed, no impression is made, and no voluntary motion can take place. 

 Besides this, in a previous chapter, we have already considered the 

 subject of paralysis arising from destruction of the fibres of the spinal 

 marrow, through which the impulse from the seat of volition is con- 

 veyed to the motor nerves. The present section is exclusively devoted 

 to the variety of palsy arising either from separation of the peripheral 

 nerves from the brain or spinal marrow, or from a loss of irritability on 

 the part of these nerves owing to alteration in their structure. 



ETIOLOGY. Separation of motor nerves from the central organs is 

 not unfrequently the result of injury, and in this class belong the cases 

 of section of nerves by a surgical operation, and by wounds of other 

 kinds. In other instances the disturbance of continuity depends upon 

 the extension of an ulceration or other destructive process to a neigh- 

 boring nerve. The destruction of the facial nerve, during its cours' 

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