Elements of medical jurisprudence / By Theodric Romeyn Beck, and John B. Beck.

  • Beck, Theodric Romeyn, 1791-1855.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of medical jurisprudence / By Theodric Romeyn Beck, and John B. Beck. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    32/1042 (page 8)
    was hence led to believe that life was destroyed solely from the repe- tition and duration of these pains.”* This case induced a deter- mination in our author to be more lenient in future. Its success will be seen in the following instances. An artillerist from the garrison of Fort de Bouc, was brought to the hospital at Martigues, with a violent pain in the left leg, and which was attributed to sleeping on the damp ground. During the space of eight months, a variety of antimonial preparations, together with mei’curials and tonics when indicated, were administered, along with local remedies, but without any relief. The leg, from the repeated use of epispastics and cauteries, became thin, and rather shorter than the other; while, from the low diet ordered, there was a general paleness and lankness of the system. Under these circumstances, Fodere could not refuse him a certificate as a real invalid. With the aid of a crutch he dragged himself to Marseilles, where he obtained the promise of a discharge. He was ordered to return to the fort to await its arrival; but, on his way thither, being too overjoyed, he was met by his commander walking without his crutch. On being put in prison, he avowed the fraud. Another case was that of a deserter, a Piedmontese, condemned to hard labour. He was conducted from prison to the workshops, marching on two crutches, as being paralytic in the lower part of the body; and from thence to the hospital, where he remained thirteen months. He supported during that time, with the greatest fortitude, the application of epispastics, moxa, and cupping; asked earnestly for the trial of new remedies, and excited the commiseration of all who saw him. At the end of the above period he was dismissed. In a short time he abandoned the use of his crutches, and never employed them except when he expected to be observed.f It is. evident from these cases that the difficulty of detection is often great. “ The imposition is perhaps more frequently discovered by the inconsistencies and contradictions which a patient makes in the history of his complaint, than by diagnostic symptoms.”^ There is also often a great aversion to the proper modes of cure.|| Internal pain, the existence of which it is difficult positively to deny, may be discovered to. be feigned by examination during sleep. Thus a soldier complained of severe pain in the abdomen, and screamed * Foderd, vol. ii. p. 471. Dr. James Johnson relates of a man who complained of inability to move his shoulder-joint without much pain, and yet nothing could be seen externally for a montb or six weeks, during which time he was excused from duty. At length the surgeon became suspicious, and finding that he still made the same complaint, reported him, and he was flogged as a skulker. Shortly, however, a deep-seated abscess was discovered in the shoulder-joint, from which large quan- tities of pus were evacuated. Anchylosis of the joint followed.—Medico-Chirurgical Review, vol. iv. p. 59G. Probably the same case is given in the Cyclopaedia of Prac- tical .Medicine, vol. ii. p. 250. ■j- Fodere, vol. ii. p. 437,474. J Marshall, p. 115. || Dr. Coclie relates the case of a French soldier who feigned lumbago. Six moxas were in succession applied during the ten months that he was in the hospital; and he only yielded when be saw the physician w'as about recommencing the use of that substance Annales D’Hygiene, vol. iv. p. 44G. Great caution is, however, necessary in these cases, lest wre mistake a real disease, psoas abscess for example, for a feigned one.