95 I am able to recall but a single case in which, even clinically speaking, a primary hemorrhage into the cord-substance was plausible. In this instance a sudden arrest of menstruation had occurred nearly simultaneously with a combined strain and exposure in a young girl.
The constitutional symptoms of acute myelitis—which, however, are often absent—are its most distinctive features in one sense. Disorders of motion and sensation and perversions of nutrition are signs common to all destructive affections of the cord, whether of a traumatic, neoplastic, or a chronic inflammatory character. But fever, headache, and delirium,96 associated with gastric and visceral disturbances of acute development, are not found to be initial and intrinsic symptoms with them as with acute myelitis. In their absence the mode of onset is characteristic. A high degree of paralysis, motor or sensory, is developed with a rapidity unequalled in any chronic affection of the cord. Sometimes there is a prodromal period in which formication, numbness, and disorders of movement are observed in the same part of the body which are destined to become paralyzed at a later stage of the malady. Within a few hours, days, or at most weeks, complete paraplegia may become developed. The prodromal symptoms may include any form of disturbed sensation. Lancinating pains, tingling, a feeling of the limbs falling asleep, peculiar and indescribable sensations attending the acts of micturition and defecation or of placing the feet violently on the ground, are common. Occasionally they are found in one limb only, although motor and sensory paralysis may ultimately occupy the symmetrical member as completely as the one first involved. In some cases it has been noted that the patient is unable to lie down, or, if lying, to occupy the dorsal recumbent position. This feature has been utilized to support the theory of an initial congestion, which is supposed to be relieved or aggravated according as the cord is kept elevated or depressed.
96 These symptoms are to be regarded as actual parts of the myelitic symptoms only when they accompany the prodromal or initial periods. The later complications, uræmia and septicæmia, the latter arising from pyelitis, cystitis, or decubitus, often lead to constitutional disturbance which is not due to the myelitis as such.
In most cases of transverse myelitis, when the anterior cornua are destructively involved, we possess in the electrical tests valuable and unerring means of determining the altitude and extent of the lesion. Whenever we find the atrophy of a paralyzed muscle accompanied by qualitative electrical changes in myelitis, we must conclude that the cell-group from which that muscle receives its nerve-supply is destructively involved.97 These changes are particularly well demonstrable when the cervical or lumbar enlargements are affected. They are not as readily ascertainable in the case of a transverse myelitis in the upper dorsal region, on account of the situation of the muscles supplied by the upper dorsal nerves, and the consequent difficulty of application of the necessary tests.
97 The proposition, originally, I believe, made by myself, that there are distinct cell-groups in the spinal cord which are constant with certain animal species, and correspond in relative development to ventral, dorsal, and appendicular muscular groups (“Architecture and Mechanism of the Brain,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, April, 1880), appears to be confirmed in a general way by the researches and cases of Edinger, Kahler-Pick, Dejerine-Major, Genzmer, Von Monakow, Sahli, Prévost-David, F. Schultze, Remak, and Parrot-Joffroy; for the knowledge of the first and last of which I am indebted to the review of the subject by Starr (“Localization of the Functions of the Spinal Cord,” American Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry, August, 1883).
The disturbance of the deep reflexes with very few exceptions affects the same peripheries as are represented in the destroyed and impaired gray nuclei. Thus, if the lower part of the lumbar enlargement be affected, the reflexes of the Achilles tendon and the gluteal muscles will disappear; if the upper lumbar enlargement, the knee-jerk disappears.98 Disease of the lower part of the cervical enlargement is in like manner associated with absence of the wrist-tendon reflexes, while the disappearance of the elbow-tendon reflex suggests a higher involvement at the levels of the fifth and sixth cervical nerve-roots.
98 The disappearance of the knee-jerk and similar reflexes was originally supposed to be a phenomenon exclusively pertaining to spinal disease and to a destructive lesion anywhere in the track of the centripetal and centrifugal nerves connected with that segment of the cord in which the reflex is supposed to be translated. But aside from a number of physiological observations99 which prove that cerebral conditions may influence the intensity of the jerk, there are pathological ones which show that it may be permanently abolished in disease of the pons and cerebellum, and temporarily abolished or diminished immediately after capsular and ventricular hemorrhage. The associated symptoms in the former case, and the history of the onset and total hemiplegia in the latter, serve to distinguish them from destructive spinal lesions should the occasion for discriminating between them ever arise; which is not likely.
99 S. Weir Mitchell and M. J. Lewis found that voluntary effort increases the jerk at first, but if continued diminishes its excursiveness (The Medical News, 1886, Feb. 13th and 20th).
In complete transverse acute myelitis of the cervical region high fever is a constant symptom. In unilateral myelitis of this region flushing of the face and unilateral sweating are produced, together with iridoplegia, sometimes preceded by dilatation, owing to initial irritation and succeeding paralysis of the sympathetic branches originating at this level of the cord.
Just as the disturbed reflexes and the belt sensations enable us to distinguish at what levels of the cord the myelitis is situated, so the distribution of the motor and sensory paralysis affords corroborative evidence of such location and additional proof of its extent and intensity.