Neck and Back.
A “singing sensation,” which seemed to come from the back of the neck, or from the medulla oblongata (1/2 ounce daily).
Extremities in General.
Jactitation of the limbs.
Superior Extremities.
The blood had settled under the fingernails, and there were purple spots on the side on which she had lain (after twelve hours). Muscular pains, chiefly felt in upper extremities.
Inferior Extremities.
Not merely leg-weakness, but some want of coordination power.
Finally, on rising one morning, he found his legs suddenly give way under him, was unable to stand or walk, and was obliged to get into bed again; this attack fortunately passed off in the course of the day, but left behind it great nervous depression and general weakness, accompanied with a feeling of utter vacuity of mind and inability to concentrate the attention upon anything.
Sensation and motion paralyzed in both legs (lasted one week).
Spells of feeling as though the legs were asleep (after four hours). Acute wandering pains in lower limbs, especially in calves of legs, occurring many weeks previous to cessation of Chloral; had a feeling, at times, on putting his feet to the ground in the morning “as if his legs were all in a mash” as if “he could not distinguish clearly between one part and another. Leg. Sat suddenly bolt upright in bed, and complained of agonizing cramps in the legs, a feeling of suffocation, of swimming in the head, and of absolute inability to co-ordinate the movements of the lower extremities (after one hour and a half). On waking at 10 A.M., found to his horror that his legs were paralyzed from the knees downward; all the rest of the body was in a normal condition; this paralysis wore off in the course of the day (second day). Dull aching pain in calves of legs, at times running down into foot; sense of fullness of skin, with throbbing (after four hours); the severity of the pain lasted for about an hour and a half, when it gave way to a dull steady leg- ache, not very severe; it returned next day, more severe.
General Symptoms.– Objective.
Literally, she resembled a living skeleton; appeared in a maudlin, semi-narcotized condition, and was only temporarily roused to consciousness by loud and repeated questioning; when roused, her answers were incoherent, her manner wild and uncertain, evincing altogether a state of mind closely bordering upon idiocy. In several parts of the field of the microscope, besides garnet-colored amorphous particles, a number of red- colored globules (double the diameter of white corpuscles, and many smaller) were seen; some of these were dark red. Almost jumping and springing, he changed from one bed to another (soon). With very great muscular agility, he was steady and sure, and with great talkativeness his speech was correct (soon). Was observed to grow quiet, his eyelids drooping (after five minutes). Inaptitude for exertion. General state one of great depression (20 grains thrice daily). Became unaccountably depressed and very weak, especially in the lower limbs, this weakness increasing until he was compelled to give up his daily walks from sheer inability to put one leg before the other. Marked decubitus, with not merely indisposition, but at times manifest incapacity for exertion.
Utter prostration of muscular strength, the limbs extended, the head low, and he had at times the aspect of impending dissolution. Lipothymia (especially on second or third day).
Getting restless (after thirty minutes). Has become restless (55 grains, after twenty-five minutes). Most extreme restlessness (3 drachms, after ten minutes). Subjective. Marked cutaneous, anaesthesia (two cases, 60 grains). Completely and profoundly anaesthetized (after forty minutes). The feeling of muscular languor was so decided after each dose as to call for special remark. Frightfully severe pains, particularly about the joints, worse in moist and cold weather; the pains very strictly resemble the analogous sufferings which are (somewhat rarely) produced by chronic alcoholism; they do not run in the course of the nerves like neuralgia, nor are they exactly in the joints, like articular rheumatism; they seem to encircle the limb, the finger, etc., immediately above or below a joint (1 ounce).
Skin.– Objective.
A diffuse inflammatory redness over the whole body, so that it was thought advisable to isolate the patient; in ten hours this redness had disappeared. Eruptions. Smooth, bright scarlet eruption over whole body (face, limbs, etc). Four ounces of wine were sufficient to induce the chloral-rash (30 grains). A scarlatinal rash broke out over the whole body, accompanied by fever and tenderness of the skin, and was followed by desquamation. The tendency which the use of Chloral produces to fluxionary hyperaemias, with increased and strengthened heart action, is first and most considerably manifested in the head, an intense erythema occurring, at first in spots, but afterwards more diffusely, and the vessels being dilated. In the more pronounced forms, the erythema extends downwards to the trunk, and becomes general, in which case it seems to follow, by preference, the course of the larger nerve- trunks. This choral-rash remains latent until set going by some stimulus to the vascular system, but then appears in an intensity and rapidity which are proportioned to the existing current of (general) chloralization. On the ninth day of treatment, a rash appeared in the form of red spots which soon became confluent. On the twentieth day, the temperature and pulse rapidly rose to a febrile pitch; three days later, the temperature had reached 106.7 deg.; large and repeated doses of Quinine were given without result, and baths had only a temporary effect edematous swelling of the face, cheeks, eyelids and ears now set in. During the whole course of the disease, the skin, so far from returning to its natural appearance, was the seat now of impetiginous, now of moist, and now of scaly eczema and ichthyoses, so that the process of desquamation, instead of being short as in the acute exanthemata, occupied many weeks, during which great sheaths of epidermis were cast off from all parts of the body. The profound lesions of the skin-nutrition were evidenced in the later stages by a remarkable shedding of the hair, and a gradual falling off of all the nails of the hands and feet. The affection of the skin was accompanied by a similar one of the mucous membranes, first of the intestines, which kept up water diarrhoea, in spite of medicines, and then by a similar affection of the conjunctiva and the bronchi. From the sixth week of the disease onwards a series of large abscesses formed on both arms over the shoulders and armpits, which secreted a considerable quantity of pus. Whilst these phenomena were occurring, there had been for eight weeks a continuous fever, occasionally remitting, and then again running up to a temperature beyond 104 deg. Eruption on face erysipelatous, and face so much swollen that she could not see. Eruption lasted four days. Eruptions on arms and legs, exactly like nettle-rash, in large raised wheals, with intense irritative itching. (Twice, on repeating the dose, the identical symptoms returned). Eruption on arms, legs, and face, and subsequently over whole body, in large blotches of different shapes, raised above the surface and of a deep-red color.
Gradually, these blotches coalesced, till the whole skin was in this red blotchy state, more nearly resembling measles than anything else. Dark erythematous flush over head and neck, with extraordinary twitching of facial muscles. Erythema of head and neck, with well-marked dark areolae. This hyperemic condition of the skin was extra-ordinarily intensified immediately after the ingestion of the smallest quantity of wine, beer, or spirits, and was accompanied invariably with palpitation of the most distressing character, both lasting for about two hours; the excessive hyperaemia disappearing last of all from the forehead in curiously well defined patches. First, erythema of the face, and later a papular rash on the arms, with red bases. In some, nettle-rash occurred (60 grains, daily). On the fourth day, a redness was developed on the skin of the chest and shoulders, which did not vanish on pressure; on the sixth day, the eruption had extended over the whole trunk and limbs, livid spots and deep red patches alternating. On the eleventh day, the petechial eruption was diminished on the chest, and abdomen, the spots were yellowish, with patches of white skin between them On the fifteenth day there was a sort of general desquamation; fissures of the skin over the sacrum and in the neighborhood of the joints (20 grains, thrice daily). Erysipelatous inflammation of the integuments of the fingers, with desquamation of the cuticle, and ulceration around the border of the nails (four cases). Subjective. Intense irritation and itching of skin, preventing sleep at night.
Sleep and Dreams.
Lies quiet; is gaping (55 grains, after six minutes). Inclination to drowsiness. For three weeks there was felt a painful sense of drowsiness. Drowsiness came on in a quarter of an hour, followed by natural sleep, which began forty-five minutes after taking. Sleep continued in one case for two hours and a half, without waking, and an hour and a half at intervals afterwards. In the other case, with the same amount, sleep only lasted one hour and a quarter (45 grains). Sleepiness (10 grains). Very sleepy in evening, and retired early; did not feel refreshed on waking, next morning. Sleep (1 scruple).
Born in 1837in Westminster, Vermont. . He was an orthodox doctor who converted to homeopathy
Dr. Allen compiled the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica over the course of 10 years.
In 1881 Allen published A Critical Revision of the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica.