Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 Excerpt:...needle woman), smiths, etc.; 34 followed occupations of promiscuous kinds--domestic and farm service, washing, housewifery, etc.; 2 were sailors, and several were labourers. It is worthy of remark that among the handicraftsmen the atrophy had become general only in a fourth of the cases, while among the gentlemen nearly half bore that type, and more than half among those following promiscuous occupations. It should likewise not be overlooked that the artizans constitute over one fourth of those about whose occupation we have any knowledge--a proportion very considerably greater than they make up in the general population of the country. Six of Dr. Meryon's cases were gentlemen's sons; but, being boys under 12, they are altogether excluded from this enumeration. There is no point connected with the etiology of the complaint, so firmly grounded as the influence of consanguinity. We have information of 10 families in which the disease had taken root, and they have supplied 18 cases sufficiently detailed, to earn a place in the analytical table; but mention is made in the narrations of additional relatives, affected with wasting palsy, whose histories it was not possible to write. In 4 of these families, the disease was confined, in each, to two brothers. Dr. Meryon's first-described cases were 4 boys, who had 6 healthy sisters. In another family mentioned by him, all the boys, namely two, were affected, while the two sisters were sound. A sea captain, whose history is related by Aran, had lost two maternal uncles and a sister by the same disease; but two other sisters, and three brothers, continued in perfect health. In another instance, more recently recorded by the same observer, the patient's two aunts had died from general muscular atrophy; and, in a famil...