I have seen three cases in which the disease terminated in hemiplegia. In two of them it proved fatal in a few days; in the third it continued for nearly eighteen months.
I have met with one case in which no preternatural slowness or intermission was ever perceived in the pulse.
I have seen the disease in children of nearly all ages. I once saw it in a child of six weeks old. It was preceded by the cholera infantum. The sudden deaths which we sometimes observe in infancy, I believe, are often produced by this disease. Dr. Stoll is of the same opinion. He calls it, when it appears in this form, “apoplexia infantalis[46].”
In the month of March, 1771, I obtained a gill of water from the ventricles of the brain of a negro girl of nine years of age, who died of this disease, who complained in no stage of it of a pain in her head or limbs, nor of a sick stomach. The disease in this case was introduced suddenly by a pain in the breast, a fever, and the usual symptoms of a catarrh.
Dr. Wistar informed me, that he had likewise met with a case of internal dropsy of the brain, in which there was a total absence of pain in the head.
Dr. Carson informed me, that he had attended a child in this disease that discovered, for some days before it died, the symptom of hydrophobia.
Dr. Currie obtained, by dissection, seven ounces of water from the brain of a child which died of this disease; in whom, he assured me, no dilatation of the pupil, strabismus, sickness, or loss of appetite had attended, and but very little head-ach.
The causes which induce this disease, act either directly on the brain, or indirectly upon it, through the medium of the whole system.
The causes which act directly on the brain are falls or bruises upon the head, certain positions of the body, and childish plays which bring on congestion or inflammation, and afterwards an effusion of water in the brain. I have known it brought on in a child by falling into a cellar upon its feet.