SPASMODIC AFFECTIONS. 407 



ed very seldom ; and in any of the accounts given of it, I can- 

 not find any circumstances that would lead me to consider it as 

 any other than a variety of the gpecies already mentioned, or 

 to take further notice of it here. 



MCCLXIX. The pathology of this disease I cannot in 

 any measure attempt ; as the structure of moving fibres, the 

 state of them under different degrees of contraction, and par- 

 ticularly the state of the sensorium, as variously determining 

 the motion of the nervous. power, are all matters very imper- 

 fectly or not at all known to me. In such a situation, there- 

 fore, the endeavouring to give any rules of practice, upon a 

 scientific plan, appears to me vain and fruitless ; and towards 

 directing the cure of this disease, we must be satisfied with 

 having learned something useful from analogy, confirmed by 

 experience. 



MCCLXX. When the disease is known to arise from the 

 lesion of a nerve in any part of the body, the first, and, as I 

 judge, the most important step to be taken towards the cure, 

 is, by every possible means, to cut off that part from all com- 

 munication with the sensorium, either by cutting through the 

 nerves in their course, or perhaps by destroying, to a certain 

 length, their affected part or extremity. 



MCCLXXI. When the cure of the disease is to be attempt- 

 ed by medicine, experience has taught us, that opium has often 

 proved an effectual remedy ; but that to render it such, it must 

 be given in much larger quantities than have been employed in 

 any other case ; and, in these larger quantities, it may, in this 

 disease, be given more safely than the body has been known to 

 bear in any other condition. The practice has been, to give 

 the opium cither in a solid or a liquid form, not in any very 

 large dose at once, but in moderate doses, frequently repeated, 

 at the interval of one, two, three, or more hours, as the violence 

 of the symptoms seems to require. Even when large quantities 

 have been given in this way, it appears that the opium does 

 not operate here in the same manner as in most other cases ; 

 for, though it procure some remisssion of the spasms and pains, 

 it hardly induces any sleep, or occasions that stupor, intoxica- 

 tion, or delirium, which it often does in other circumstances, 

 when much smaller quantities only have been given. It is 



