The invention of the Morse telegraph in 1844, and its general introduction, both here and abroad, a few years later, has proved a most fertile source of copodyscinesia, although but little has been written on this form of neurosis, Onimus,6 Robinson,7 and Fulton8 being among the few to describe it, although several later writers mention its existence.
6 “Le Mal télégraphique ou Crampe télégraphique,” Compte Rend. Soc. de Biol., 1878, 6, S. V. 92-96; also “Crampe des Employés au Télégraph,” Gaz. méd. de Paris, 1875, p. 175.
7 Edmund Robinson, M.D., “Cases of Telegraphists' Cramp” (4 cases), British Med. Journ., Nov. 4, 1882.
8 Thomas Weymss Fulton, “Telegraphists' Cramp,” Edinburgh Clin. and Path. Journ., Feb. 2, 1884.
Telegraph operators, particularly those employed in large cities, whose time is nearly all taken up with their work, are more exposed to the causes of copodyscinesia than those following other trades. They are not only exposed to the danger of contracting the affection by using the telegraph-key in transmitting messages, but when not so employed are receiving messages by sound and writing them down, frequently at the rate of thirty to forty, or even more, words per minute. Thirty words a minute is good telegraphy: this would require, on the average, nearly 600 separate contractions. This would be 36,000 contractions per hour, while to write the same sentences would require about 10,000 less.
The operators employed by the Associated Press, although comparatively few in number, two hundred probably including all in the United States, write for hours at a time, using a stylus and manifold writing-books, making as many as twelve copies at one writing; this obliges them to grasp the stylus very firmly and to press with considerable force, making the act of writing much more difficult.
In addition to the work mentioned above, those who have large numbers of messages to transmit become so expert that to save time they make a record concerning the last message sent with the left hand, while they are telegraphing the next one with the right hand. A complicated act of co-ordination is thus being performed with each hand, the difficulty of which may be appreciated by any one if he but try to perform it.
An editorial in the London Lancet9 states that “telegraphers' cramp will, we have little doubt, take its stand among the last-mentioned curiosities” (milkers' cramp, hammer palsy, etc.), and "that the telegraph clerk usually enjoys repeated intervals of complete rest, and runs consequently hardly any risk.”
9 1875, vol. i. p. 585.
Hammond10 likewise states that telegraphers' cramp is rare in the United States, but a slight investigation proves these two statements to be, unfortunately, very far from the truth. According to recent statistics,11 the Western Union Telegraph Company employs nearly twenty thousand operators, who transmit annually over thirty-five million messages, and as investigation seems to prove that a very large number, if not the majority, sooner or later show some symptoms of copodyscinesia, it becomes evident that this neurosis is far from rare, although hitherto almost entirely overlooked by the medical profession.