num_pages: 582
description:  ...water in the execution of his business. He says his hands had frequently been much benumbed before so that he could not without difficulty clench them; but that they recovered their motion as soon as they began to glow after he had dried and covered them. In this case there existed two injurious circumstances of different kinds; one the violent and continued action of the muscles which destroys by exhausting the sensorial power; and the other the application of cold which destroys by defect of stimulus. The cold seems to have contributed to the paralysis by its long application as well as the continued exertion; but as during the torpor occasioned by the exposure to cold if the degree of it be not so great as to extinguish life the sensorial power becomes accumulated; there is reason to believe that the exposing a paralytic limb to the cold for a certain time as by covering it with snow or iced water for a few minutes and then covering it with warm flannel and this frequently repeated might by accumulation of sensorial power contribute to restore it to a state of voluntary excitability. As this accumulation of sensorial power and consequent glow seems in the present case several times to have contributed to restore the numbness or inability of those muscles which at length became paralytic. See Class I. 2. 3. 21 . M. M. Ether externally. Friction. Saline warm bath. Electricity. 5 . Raucedo paralytica. Paralytic hoarseness consists in the almost total loss of voice which sometimes continues for months or even years and is occasioned by inability or paralysis of the recurrent nerves which serve the muscles of vocality by opening or closing the larynx. The voice generally returns suddenly even so as to alarm the patient. A young lady who had many months been affected with almost a total loss of voice and had in vain tried variety of advice recovered her voice in an instant on some alarm as she was dancing at an assembly....
language: English
title: Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life
publisher: None