THE NEURAL DISORDERS OF WRITERS AND ARTISANS.
BY MORRIS J. LEWIS, M.D.
DEFINITION.—These neural disorders consist of a certain train of nervous symptoms, such as spasm, paralysis, pain, tremor, vaso-motor disturbances, etc., either alone or in more or less complicated combinations, which follow certain muscular acts and are occasionally accompanied by a marked condition of general nervousness; they occur in many of the occupations of every-day life that require for their performance a constant muscular strain combined with more or less delicate movements of co-ordination continued for long periods at a time.
SYNONYMS.—Among the terms used to designate the various forms of the affections produced in the manner just stated may be mentioned the following:
Special Terms.—Writers' cramp, Scriveners' palsy, Steel-pen palsy, Chorea scriptorum, Paralysis notariorum, Graphospasmus, Mogigraphia, Crampe des écrivains, Nevrose des écrivains, Schreibekrampf, Le mal télégraphique, Crampe télégraphique, Klavierkrampf, Pianists' cramp, Tailors' cramp, Loss of grip, etc.
General Terms.—Professional dyscinesiæ, Professional impotence, Anapeiratic paralysis, Nevrose co-ordinatrice des professions, Functional spasm, Fatigue diseases, Professional hyperkineses, etc.
None of these terms are satisfactory, and, in fact, it is difficult to fine one that will include the various symptoms arising from the habitual use of a muscle or group of muscles, in the same way for long periods at a time, in the different occupations known to give rise to these neuroses, without including diseases belonging to entirely different classes.
It is with some hesitation that I suggest the term copodyscinesia (κόπος, toil, weariness, fatigue; and δυσκινησια—δυς, faulty, difficult, hard, and κινησις, motion, movement) as signifying difficult or faulty motion due to constant repetition of the same act.