1. 1. 6. OF VOLITION. 2SI 



occasions their death, or of faintness from want of due disten- 

 tion of the blood vessels. Similar to this in a less degree is the 

 subsultus tendinum, or starting of the tendons, in fevers with de- 

 bility; these actions of the muscles are too weak to move the 

 limb, but the belly of the acting muscles is seen to swell, and 

 the tendon to be stretched. These weak convulsions, as they 

 are occasioned by .he disagreeable sensation of faintness from 

 inanition, are symptoms of great general debility, and thence 

 frequently precede the general convulsions of the act of dying. 

 See a case of convulsion of a muscle of the arm, and of the fore- 

 arm, without moving the bones to which they were attached, 

 Sect. XVII. 1. 8. See twitchings of the face, Class IV. 1. 3. 2. 



6. Convulsio dolorifica. Raphania. Painful convulsion. In 

 this disease the muscles of the arms and legs are exerted to re- 

 lieve the pains left after the rheumatism in young and delicate 

 people; it recurs once or twice a day, and has been mistaken for 

 the chorea, or St. Vitus's dance; but differs from it, as the un- 

 due motions in that disease only occur, when the patient endea- 

 vours to exert the natural ones; are not attended with pain; and 

 cease when he lies down without trying to move: the chorea, 

 or dance of St. Vitus, is often introduced by the itch, this by the 

 rheumatism. 



It has also been improperly called nervous rheumatism; but 

 is distinguished from rheumatism, as the pains recur by peri- 

 ods once or twice a day; whereas in the chronic rheumatism 

 they only occur on moving the affected muscles. And by the 

 warmth of a bed the pains of the chronic rheumatism are in- 

 creased, as the muscles or membranes then become more sensi- 

 ble to the stimulus of the extraneous mucaginous material de- 

 posited under them. Whereas the pains of the raphania, or 

 painful convulsion, commence with coldness of the part, or 

 of the extremities. See Rheumatismus chronic us. Class I. 

 1. 3. 12. 



The pains which accompany the contractions of the muscles 

 in this disease, seem to arise from the too great violence of those 

 contractions, as happens in the cramp of the calf of the leg; 

 from which they differ in those being fixed, and these being re- 

 iterated contractions. Thus these convulsions are generally of 

 the lower limbs, and recur at periodical times from some uneasy 

 sensation from defect of action, like other periodic diseases; 

 and the convulsions of the limbs relieve the original uneasy pain- 

 ful sensation, and then produce a greater pain from their own 

 too vehement contractions. There is however another way of 

 accounting for these pains, when they succeed the acute rheu- 

 matism; and that is by the coagulable lymph, which may be left 



VOL, it, oo 



