APPENDIX,

CONTAINING

REPORTS OF BRITISH PRACTITIONERS IN FAVOUR OF ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

"The mere account of foreign cases is not enough. The sober good sense of British practitioners requires that what was done at Paris, or Vienna, should be capable of repetition in London."

Medical Quarterly Review. London, 1835.

APPENDIX.

I.

REPORT OF CASES TREATED MAGNETICALLY AT THE NORTH LONDON HOSPITAL, BY DR. ELLIOTSON.

(Extracted from the Lancet, Saturday, September 9th, 1837.)

THE first case was one of epilepsy, occurring in a girl sixteen years of age, a housemaid of diminutive stature. She had been subject for twelve months before her admission, on the 4th of April, 1837, to attacks of epilepsy, which occurred about once a week, or oftener. At twelve years of age she had a fall, by which she was stunned: this was worthy of remembrance. She was subject to almost constant headaches in the morning and evening; they also came on a short time previous to the occurrence of a fit, and sometimes shooting pains across the occiput preceded the fit for a few days. She also experienced before the fit came on a sensation of coldness, which ran up the spine, and was attended with numbness, which, when it reached the head, produced the feeling of her being stunned, and then she lost consciousness. The fit was characterised by convulsions, chiefly of the face and trunk; the extremities were in a rigid state, the hands clenched, the face variously contorted, the eyes rolled. This state was not followed by coma, but with a restlessness and

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sleeplessness, and a severe throbbing pain of the head, which generally continued for three or four hours. She had been cupped on the shoulders last January, and had leeches applied to the temples, and took some aperient medicine. She had a fit last night; the fits usually come on in bed during the state intermediate between sleeping and waking. Complained on her admission of headache, and sickness after food; tongue clean, appetite bad, bowels regular.

The peculiarity in this case consisted in the fact of the patient, as soon as the convulsions of the epileptic seizure were over, subsiding into a restless, fidgetty state, which lasted three or four hours, instead of falling into the state of coma, which is usual in this affection. In the treatment of the case, at first, as the pulse was not full, it was thought there was no necessity for blood-letting, and low diet was considered sufficiently active antiphlogistic treatment; and on the 4th of April quarter-grain doses of nitrate of silver were commenced, and given three times a-day: the dose was increased by a quarter of a grain gradually, until she reached two-grain doses three times a-day. On the 9th, the report stated that since the last fit, which occurred on the 6th, she had suffered from continual pain in the temples, and, indeed, all over the head, and it was found necessary to take blood, which was buffed and cupped. She was now subject to similar attacks, and it was found necessary frequently to bleed her; the pulse was hard and full. On the 16th of May she was bled to eight ounces; on the 20th, to eight ounces; and on the 23rd ten ounces were taken away. The nitrate of silver was being increased all this time gradually. She took this medicine for six weeks from its first commencement; he (Dr. E.)

never gave it during a longer period, for fear of discolouring the skin. On the 27th of May, the fits being as frequent as before, though the nitrate of silver was given in two-grain doses, that medicine was discontinued, and the cuprum ammoniatum, in quarter of a grain doses, was commenced, and given three times a-day, the dose being increased by a quarter of a grain twice a week. On the 5th of June she was taking onegrain doses of the medicine; this produced sickness, though, as has been stated, she bore two-grain doses of the nitrate of silver. As the copper produced this nausea, the dose was diminished to three-quarters of a grain; and as this now, also, produced sickness, on the 10th she took one minim of creosote with each dose of it, and this effectually prevented the nausea, and the copper was again increased to grain doses. On the 16th, the report states, that there has been no nausea and no fit. On the 17th, however, the nausea returned, and the creosote was increased to two minimdoses, with the effect of checking the sickness, and she bore the copper well. On the 20th, the dose was increased to one grain and a quarter. On the 24th, there had been no fit, and there was no nausea. Soon after she began the copper, which had not produced any decided effects, another agent was called into action in the cure, and any alteration in the state of the case he (Dr. E.) considered was to be ascribed to this.

Under this treatment, which he should shortly speak of more fully, the fits ceased altogether, and instead of the patient having convulsions as she used to have, she was now seized with fits of somnambulism, or, as it had been proposed to call the state, somno-vigilium a much more appropriate term, and one which expressed the condition better, the patient being both asleep and awake,