518 Howrah Hospital Report for 1846. 



days. Treatment, leeching largely to the head and back, sina- 

 pisms and blister to the back, setting them over steam whilst 

 well covered up, opiates, aperients. 



Paralysis of a rheumatic character occurring in a boy of 14 years 

 of age, after confinement to his cot at sea in consequence of sore legs. 

 He began gradually to lose the use of his limbs, the paralysis 

 having been preceded for a week by severe abdominal griping. 

 Without having previously experienced pain in his head or joints, 

 he has become quite unable to stand, having lost all strength and 

 power of support in the ankle-joints ; he cannot now raise either 

 thigh upon the pelvis, or raise the arms at the shoulders ; he has 

 nearly lost all voluntary power over the ankle-joints, and over the 

 joints of fingers and toes ; he experiences a sense of numbness from the 

 knees and elbows downwards ; the muscles of the lower extremities 

 are much emaciated ; there is slight tenderness on tapping the dorsal 

 spine ; he is conscious of tickling when applied to the sole of the 

 foot, although not of pinching it. Whilst taking strychnine one grain 

 in the course of four days, continued for 16 days, he experienced 

 creeping and tingling sensations in both legs, startings in his sleep, 

 and occasional headache and giddiness. The treatment consisted of 

 a blister to the back low down, strychnine, cold bath, and, especially, 

 of constant use of the joints by causing him to try to support the 

 weight of his body, and by repeated motion and friction of the joints. 

 In less time than a month he walked well alone ; too violent exertion 

 during the progress of his restoration occasioned headache, and 

 a feeling of tightness of the hamstrings, and threw him back for 

 a day or two. 



In another somewhat similar case of paralysis, in a man of 30, 

 only of greater helplessness, in which the feet were quite, without the 

 influence of the will, and perfectly useless, dangling at the ex- 

 tremities of the legs as if attached to the legs at the ankles by joints 

 of leather — the history given was obscure ; the man had been a free 

 liver, had seen vicissitudes of fortune, and been exposed in the course 

 of his life to severity of climate ; he dates his present complaint from 

 a cold caught on the river six months ago ; that he then began to 

 experience symptoms of paralysis in both lower and upper extremities 

 with loss of memory ; he was admitted into hospital perfectly bed- 



