PARALYSIS. 397 
At times the paralyzed muscles are flabby and relaxed ; if it is in one leg,. 
one can move itin all directions without the slightest resistance (flaccid or: 
relaxed paralysis ) ; at others, but less commonly, the muscles are stiff,. 
contracted (spastic paralysis.) 
Neuropathic paralysis are only symptoms common to various lesions of: 
- the brain, of the cord or of the nerves. To treat them rationally, it is. 
~ necessary to determine the seat as well as the lesion of the existing 
- lesions. There are cases where the impossibility of standing (paraplegia), 
the lameness (paralysis of the femoral), the mode of carrying the leg- 
” (paralysis of the radial), the aspect of the region (paralysis of the facial) 
immediately give information. But in others, the diagnosis is difficult. 
The sensibility, the reflexes, the electric contractiity may give valuable- 
assistance. 
The sensibility may be increased, diminished or perverted. In animals,. 
general sensibility is tested by pricking or burning. Generally the dimi-. 
nution of sensibility is located on the same side as the paralysis; yet 
hemiplegia can exist on one side and hemianesthesia on the other. The: 
examination of special sensations (hearing, sight, smell) is also very impor- 
tant. Difference in the pupils, myosis, mydriasis, absence of pupillar 
changes by light, indicate lesions of the encephalon, cervical cord or 
sympathetic. 
Tendinous reflexes. (patellar reflex, that of the tendo-achillis) are nor-- 
mal, exaggerated, diminished or suppressed. Their mechanism is known : 
the mechanical irritation, carried to the gray substance of the cord by the - 
centripetal fibres and the posterior medullar roots, is propagated to the- 
motrice cells of the anterior horns of the cord, where it is transmitted to. 
the muscles by the peripheric motrice ways. The integrity of the 
«spinal reflex current’ is the condition of the presence, in the normal state, 
of tendinous reflexes. They are diminished or abolished with lesions in-- 
volving the centripetal or centrifugal nervous fibres, or the anterior or 
posterior roots of the marrow, or again the gray medullary substance. 
And as there exists in the encephalon and the superior layers of the cord,. 
moderating centers of these reflexes, one may understand how the lesions,. 
which involve the brain and the anterior half of the cord and suppress the-: 
influence of these centers upon the inferior regions of the spinal marrow, 
may produce an exaggeration of these reflexes. That is what occurs in. 
many circumscribed medullary. affections, which leave intact the reflex 
spinal arch. 
Electric exploration (faradization ot galvanization) gives also useful 
indications. The electric muscular contractility is preserved in paralysis. 
with cerebral origin and in some paralysis with spinal origin (when. 
the segment of the cord, which innerves the paralyzed. muscles, is z”— 
