Urtication (flogging with stinging nettles) and flagellation (beating with rods) in the treatment of paralysis.

Urtication and flagellation were used as a last resort in the treatment of paralysis when all other means were exhausted, and very few cases are reported in the literature. Two cases were identified and reviewed, one of urtication (flogging with nettles) and one of flagellation (beating with rods). In both cases the symptoms were alleviated, but there was insufficient detail to evaluate the therapeutic value of each treatment.

[From "Shaking Palsy" to "Parkinson's Disease": Was Charcot Correct?]

In light of contemporary knowledge, we review a classic case of "Parkinson's disease" presented by Charcot. The patient, Bachère, provided an opportunity to change the name of the disease from "Shaking palsy" to "Parkinson's disease". We also explore a total of 4 cases of "Parkinson's disease in extension", especially that of Rab. Léon, described in 2 articles (1889 and 1892) in Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière. Although diagnosed by Charcot as a type of Parkinson's disease, and historically accepted as such, he may have been misled. English text is available

A circular depression at the spinoglenoid notch of a prehistoric Andean scapula: Plausible evidence of suprascapular nerve entrapment by a paralabral cyst.

While intraosseous cysts have been described in the paleopathological literature, it is rare to find reports concerning effects of soft tissue cysts, although they are relatively common in clinical contexts. Here we present plausible evidence of an extraosseous paralabral cyst, seen in an adult scapula from a Late Intermediate period commingled tomb (ca. AD 1200) at the northern highland site of Marcajirca, Ancash, Peru. The scapula demonstrated a smooth-sided concave depression at the spinoglenoid notch. The depression was notable for its regular appearance, with no bone deposition or destruction. Rather than reflect an intraosseous pathology, the defect likely resulted from pressure erosion from a space-occupying mass. A narrow strip of flattened bone connected the depression to the posterior-superior aspect of the glenoid. The location and morphology of the depression and its connection with the glenoid are consistent with the effects of a paralabral cyst that arose secondary to a tear of the posterior-superior glenoid labrum. A labral tear may act as a one-way valve permitting fluid to flow along a path of least resistance, often to the spinoglenoid notch. A cyst at the spinoglenoid notch would compress the suprascapular nerve, causing weakened function of infraspinatus and its eventual atrophy.

[Advice and treatment from the clairvoyant Croiset]. / Adviezen en behandeling van de paragnost Croiset.

Around 1960, the Dutch clairvoyant Gerard Croiset (1909-1980) was consulted by 'people with symptoms - considered to be unexplained - such as paralysis or neurological disorders'. I searched the archive of the Johan Borgman Fund Foundation for the effect of Croiset's advice and treatment in patients with these symptoms who might have had the diagnosis of conversion disorder. Contrary to my expectations, Croiset treated no patients with conversion disorder. His advice and treatment were successful in patients with poliomyelitis, epilepsy, lumbar disc prolapse and infantile encephalopathy. Four of his patients had been insufficiently stimulated by the first person who treated them to improve their remaining muscular strength through exercise; symptoms of anxiety had not been investigated sufficiently in two patients; and in one patient the treating professional had adhered too rigidly to the set treatment. Alternative healers are apparently not only successful with patients with unexplained symptoms, and their success is not always the result of a placebo effect.

Race, alcohol and general paralysis: Emil Kraepelin's comparative psychiatry and his trips to Java (1904) and North America (1925).

This article examines Emil Kraepelin's notion of comparative psychiatry and relates it to the clinical research he conducted at psychiatric hospitals in South-East Asia (1904) and the USA (1925). It argues that his research fits awkwardly within the common historiographic narratives of colonial psychiatry. It also disputes claims that his work can be interpreted meaningfully as the fons et origio of transcultural psychiatry. Instead, it argues that his comparative psychiatry was part of a larger neo-Lamarckian project of clinical epidemiology and was thus primarily a reflection of his own long-standing diagnostic practices and research agendas. However, the hospitals in Java and America exposed the institutional constraints and limitations of those practices and agendas.

Perspectives of Medieval Persian Medicine on Multiple Sclerosis.

INTRODUCTION: Traditional Persian Medicine (TPM) was the prevailing practice of medicine in the Eurasia region up through the 18th century, a practice of medicine stemming back to Hippocrates and to the 5000 year old civilization of the region. It is a school of medicine which touches on many a delicate points which may seem unimaginable within the realm of modern allopathic medicine. This practice of ancient medicine besides shedding light on various possible theoretical modern day disorders serves as a vast resource for therapeutics. In this paper, we present study of the manuscripts of this ancient medical practice in search of symptom presentations coinciding with presentation of multiple sclerosis (MS). MATERIAL & METHOD: This paper represents a comprehensive search through TPM texts and manuscripts with the intention to seek possible clues on MS from potentially valuable age-old resources. We predominantly focused our search on the works of five eminent physicians of Medieval Persia: Avicenna (980-1037 AD), Haly Abbas (949-982 AD), Rhazes (865-925 AD), Averroes (1126-1198 AD) and Jorjani (1042-1137 AD). RESULTS: In this paper, the authors attempt a theory and conclude with high probability that a conjunction of a series of signs, symptoms found in TPM texts under the terms khadar, isterkha and falej form the symptoms and the disease pattern of modern day MS. This theory draws upon existent similarities in terms of disease pathology, disease patterns and predisposing factors seen between MS and the related morbidities within Persian Medicine. CONCLUSION: We recommend further examinations of such potentially valuable long-standing resources, examining the diagnoses and treatments as set forth by Persian Medicine through international collaboration within the global scientific community.

Parálisis general progresiva / Progressive general paralysis

El objeto central de este texto es la realización de un estudio histórico de la PGP como un problema clínico psiquiátrico, por lo que se abordarán temas relacionados con la clasificación nosológica, los diagnósticos uy los modelos terapéuticos. Para ello tomé como herramienta principal la base de datos del 20% de los pacientes ingresados com esta enfermedad al manicomio General La Castañeda, las tesis realizadas por los mismos médicos-psiquiatras y artículos de revistas médicas especializadas, además de las historias clínicas de estos enfermos que se encuentran en el Archivo Histórico de la secretaría de Salud.(AU)

Functional limb weakness and paralysis.

Functional (psychogenic) limb weakness describes genuinely experienced limb power or paralysis in the absence of neurologic disease. The hallmark of functional limb weakness is the presence of internal inconsistency revealing a pattern of symptoms governed by abnormally focused attention. In this chapter we review the history and epidemiology of this clinical presentation as well as its subjective experience highlighting the detailed descriptions of authors at the end of the 19th and early 20th century. We discuss the relevance that physiological triggers such as injury and migraine and psychophysiological events such as panic and dissociation have to understanding of mechanism and treatment. We review many different positive diagnostic features, their basis in neurophysiological testing and present data on sensitivity and specificity. Diagnostic bedside tests with the most evidence are Hoover's sign, the hip abductor sign, drift without pronation, dragging gait, give way weakness and co-contraction.

[Discussion on acupuncture for flaccid paralysis from "treating flaccid paralysis by yangming alone"].

Theories regarding"treating flaccid paralysis by yangming alone" are summarized, and the treatment effects of "yangming is the sea of five viscera and six organs", "yangming is in charge of smoothing the tendon and muscle, while tendon and muscle is in charge of connecting bones and movement" and "tendon and muscle is the crossing point of yin meridians and yang meridians, which is converged in yangming" are explained. With medical cases from later generations, it is summarized that besides "using yangming alone", "mainly using yang-ming" and "multiple meridians and acupoints" can also be recommend, indicating that focus should be paid not only on yangming, but also on,syndrome differentiation and treatment, and accompanying symptoms should be emphasized to regulate the body. The commonly used acupoints for flaccid paralysis are summarized to guide the clinical treatment and manipulation.

Non-polio enteroviruses from acute flaccid paralysis surveillance in Shandong Province, China, 1988-2013.

Enteroviruses (EVs) are important human pathogens associated with various clinical syndromes. This study represents an overview of non-polio enteroviruses (NPEVs) isolated from acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) surveillance in Shandong Province, China from 1988 to 2013. Altogether 792 and 170 NPEV isolates were isolated from stool specimens of 9263 AFP cases and 1059 contacts, respectively. Complete VP1 sequencing and typing on all 962 isolates revealed 53 NPEV types in which echovirus (E) 6 (7.6%), E14 (7.6%), E11 (7.4%), coxsackievirus (CV) B3 (7.4%), E25 (5.6%), CVB5 (4.9%), E7 (4.5%) and EV-A71 (4.4%) were the eight most commonly reported serotypes. Distinct summer-fall seasonality was observed, with June-October accounting for 79.3% of isolation from AFP cases with known month of specimen collection. Increase of isolation of EV-A71 and CVA--the predominant pathogens for the hand, foot, and mouth disease--was observed in recent years. Sequence analysis on VP1 coding region of EV-A71 and E6 suggested Shandong strains had great genetic divergence with isolates from other countries. The results described in this study provide valuable information on the circulation and emergence of different EV types in the context of limited EV surveillance in China.

Pioneering the concepts of stereognosis and polyradiculoneuritis: Octave Landry (1826-1865).

Octave Landry was one of a long list of fine 19th century clinicians who died very young and whose discoveries in physiology and descriptions of new clinical pictures helped found current-day neurology. In 1852, Landry proposed a new take on the physiology of sensation which laid the ground for the concepts of proprioception and stereognosis. He also described the clinical picture of a rapidly progressing ascending paralysis, which in 1859 prefigured Guillain-Barré syndrome. In discussing his very active life, we will mention the hydrotherapies in fashion at the time and the pleasures of Parisian society. Landry's career was also marked by terrible cholera epidemics, one of which killed him at age 39, in the prime of his working life as a devoted physician.

The 'scientific artworks' of Doctor Paul Richer.

This article examines the little-known sculptures of pathology created by Doctor Paul Richer (1849-1933) in the 1890s for the so-called Musée Charcot at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in Paris. Under the direction of Doctor Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), one of the founders of modern neurology, Richer was the head of the hospital's museum of pathological anatomy, as well as the Salpêtrière's resident artist. His 'series of figural representations of the principal types of nervous pathology' included busts of patients suffering from labio-glosso-laryngeal paralysis and myopathy, as well as sculptures depicting patients with Parkinson's disease and juvenile hypothyroidism. These patient portraits were seen as objective, while also paradoxically providing an alternative to mechanical media, such as the photograph and the cast, by permitting the doctor's intervention in not only controlling and animating the sitter, but also emphasising the patient's symptoms. This was a new kind of medical specimen: the 'scientific artwork', as they were called by a contemporary. This phrase, far from being an oxymoron, indicates the purposive collapse of the objective ('scientific') and subjective ('artistic') binary in Richer's sculptures of pathology. Through a detailed examination of three of Richer's works, this article problematises the categories traditionally used to describe, analyse and understand medical imagery and complicates our understanding of the relationship between science and art at the end of the nineteenth century.

'Abhorreas pinguedinem': Fat and obesity in early modern medicine (c. 1500-1750).

Contrary to a widely held belief, the medicalization of obesity is not a recent development. Obesity was extensively discussed in leading early modern medical textbooks, as well as in dozens of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dissertations. Drawing upon ancient and medieval writings, these works discussed the negative impact of obesity upon health and linked it with premature death. Obesity was particularly associated with apoplexy, paralysis, asthma and putrid fevers, and a range of therapeutic options was proposed. This paper offers a first survey of the medical understanding of the causes, effects and treatment of obesity in the early modern period. It examines the driving forces behind the physicians' interest and traces the apparently rather limited response to their claims among the general public. Comparing early modern accounts of obesity with the views and stereotypes prevailing today, it notes the impact of changing medical, moral and aesthetic considerations and identifies, among other things, a shift in the early modern period from concepts of pathological compression to images of the obese body as lax and boundless.