Headaches or neuralgic pains, due to local irritations, as uterine disease, stricture, neurotic or nerve tumors, pressure of trusses, eye strain from weakened eye muscles, or lenses that need the help of proper spectacles, require for a permanent cure the removal of the cause. Sciatic neuralgia, one of the most common and painful forms of nerve irritation, is particularly amenable to treatment by the modern means of cure used in our practice at the Invalids' Hotel.
We find, as a rule, that severe headaches and neuralgias are but the forerunners of more serious conditions, and are therefore deserving of special attention. They should be corrected as early as possible, before any organic changes have occurred.
PARALYSIS OR PALSY;
LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA AND KINDRED AFFECTIONS.
Paralysis is an affection characterized by loss of muscular power or by the sense of touch, taste, sight or smell becoming impaired from injury to a nerve by accident or disease.
The disease is sometimes due to simple lack of nerve force or power. This may come from interference with the blood supply of the nerve centres, as in hysterical palsy and reflex paralysis. Frequently the power of speech is affected in this way, ability to remember and difficulty in pronunciation of certain words being the most common. Certain affections of the womb and its appendages, in women, and, in men, stricture of the urethra, adherent prepuce, or foreskin, with wounds and injuries, many times of nerves and organs remote from the paralyzed points, cause the loss of power.
The Causes of Paralysis are very numerous. Whatever destroys, or impairs the natural structure of nervous matter, or whatever interferes materially with the conducting power of nerve-fibre, or the generating power of the nerve-centres, will produce a paralysis, the extent of which will depend upon the amount of nervous matter affected. Thus paralysis may be due to disease of the brain arising from apoplexy; to abscess, softening, syphilitic or other tumors, or epilepsy; to disease of the spinal cord, or marrow; to disease of the structures which surround the spinal cord, producing pressure upon it; to injury or compression of a nerve, by which its conducting power it impaired; to the effects of diphtheria, hysteria, or rheumatism. It may also be due to poisoning of nervous matter with opium, lead, arsenic, or mercury; or to the retention of poisonous substances which are generated in the living body and which should pass off through the excretory organs, as the elements of the urine and bile.
Members of consumptive families are very prone to paralysis.
We also find that the disease is often the result of some nervous strain, or over excitement The over indulgence of the passions is particularly a fruitful source of injury to the brain and spinal centres. An angry man or woman uses up more nerve energy in a few minutes than would be sufficient to serve the muscles with stimulus through hours of toil.