Back pain

“ He has pain in the back on making any movement, and there is a diffuse tenderness or hyperæsthesia along the spine. There is weakness of the limbs, sometimes attended with numbness, and he is easily fatigued by walking. ”

“ A pain may be aggravated by position—for example, when the patient is on his feet—or worse when he is lying down—a headache, for instance. Most abdominal pains are worse when the patient is on his feet. (b) A pain may be aggravated by motion. Most of the surgical injuries, sprains, strains, tears of muscle or ligament, and fractures of bones are naturally made worse by motion. Pain may be aggravated by certain particular motions, as is the case with some of the innumerable pains in the back. ”

“ If the back muscles are sprained, then the same treatment should be applied, taking special care to stimulate with moist heat and rubbing the part of the spine on a level with the injury, where the roots of the nerves lie which supply the sprained muscles. Care must ever be taken to avoid giving pain—to give pain is to increase the injury. To produce a glow of heat all through the parts is to cure it. ”

“ Spinal Congestion.—This is one of the varieties of disease-pictures that call for a deviation in management, and is, perhaps, as common as any of the special types, and may be recognized by the following symptoms: pain in the back, as if from long stooping, not increased by pressure; also a dull, aching sensation, as after prolonged exercise. This pain is aggravated by the recumbent posture; hence the sleeplessness so common in many of these cases. Fainting sensations are produced by standing long upon the feet: a misstep, or a sudden jolt in a wagon or car, causes much suffering. ”

“ Black himself, chiefly with the 3x and θ.
This proving is quite long. From it we note the following symptoms: Severe pain in right shoulder joint. Muscular twitching in right leg. Dull pain under left false ribs. Neuralgic pain in sciatic nerve. Back, lumbar region, stiff and weak. Pain in right knee joint, painful to move and tender to the touch. Weight and oppression of the heart, with gripping feeling as if a hand were squeezing it; the load seemed to lift, with great relief, but came back again. A curious sensation of tickling about the heart. Twinges of pain in the great toes. ”

“ In its most common form, that of cramp in the limbs, this disorder comes on suddenly, often during sleep, the patient being aroused by an agonizing feeling of pain in the calf of the leg or back of the thigh, accompanied in many instances with a sensation of sickness or faintness from the intensity of the suffering. During the paroxysm the muscular fibres affected can often be felt gathered up into a hard knot. ”

“ The temples, eyes, neck and small of the back, are in their order, the usual locations of greatest pain. Such attacks vary in frequency and severity. One attack is usually followed by an early recurrence, which may be more or less severe, while the period of active pain varies from a few hours to several days. ”

“ The SYMPTOMS attributed to hyperæmia of the spinal membranes are pain in the back extending to the legs, with numbness and tingling of the toes, sensation of weight in the limbs, muscular weakness, appearing suddenly without fever and usually of transient duration. There is no evidence that it gives rise to paralysis. ”

“ Case XVII. Spinal Irritation and Loss of Use of Right Leg—Five Years’ Illness—Operation—Cure. M. B., æt. 30, single; admitted into the London Surgical Home Nov. 15, 1861.
History.—Five years ago first began to suffer pain in the right leg, which was ascribed to sciatica. Fourteen months since this pain became so bad that she could not walk, and she lost all use of her right leg, at the same time felt great weakness and pain in the back, preventing her sitting. For eight months has been confined to a “spinal couch.” Is a spare anæmic woman; dark hair and eyes; dilated pupils ”

“ The body being kept in an [pg 899] upright position, the patient bends the knees rather than the back in stooping, as illustrated in Fig. 5, and the body is frequently supported by the hands being placed upon the thighs or knees. Sudden movements or shocks cause more or less pain.
The development of the disease then becomes rapid; suffering increases, and pain about the joints and lower extremities and muscles of the posterior part of the pelvis is experienced; numbness and coldness of the extremities are felt ”

“ To wake the sense of this eternal need, present though unrecognized under every joy, was the final cause of every sorrow and pain against which Richard rebelled—most naturally rebelled, knowing neither the plague of a heart that would but could not be lord over itself, nor of a nature hatefully imperfect and spotted, yea capable of what itself could not but detest. ”

“ It must be better, for the one misery of miseries would be to live in the same world with Barbara married: She was out of sight of him, far as princess or queen—or angel, if there were such a being; but the thought that she should marry a common, outside man, who knew no more what things were precious than the lowest fellow in the slums, was a pain he could neither stifle nor endure. Could a woman like Barbara for an instant entertain the notion? If she loved a man worthy of her, then—he thought, as so many have for a moment thought—he could bear the torture of it! ”

“ On the lawn a line of men forms. They bend their necks, cowering before the fierce glow, but daring it, and prepared to face it at even closer range. You are to witness now an exhibition of that heroism which is commoner with us than we think, that spirit of do and dare which mocks at danger and even welcomes pain. ”

“ He knew that pain and sickness do rub some dirt from the windows toward the infinite, and that things of the old unknown world whence we came, do sometimes look in at them, a moment now, and a moment then, waking new old things that lie in every child born into the world. I seem to see the great marshes where the souls go wandering about after the bog-fires; a kiss blown from the walls of the city comes wavering down among them; it flits hither and thither with the dead-lights; it finds a soul with a spot on which it can alight ”

“ The sunrise was beautiful as a fair dream, sprigs of light snapping on the surface of the marshy pools and slow streams, where the cool dawn-wind shook the water’s surface.
“And now I will go to my rest,” said Clio.
“And I,” said the others. “And I too.” Only Erato strove to rise and could not, and fell back, breathing quickly.
“I have grown weak,” she said, and her voice was low, so that it could hardly be heard. “I will stay here, and rest here, in the warm light of the sun: I am cold, strangely cold.”
Euterpe and Cupid stayed with Erato. ”

“ The glory of her pretty head had come back to life as strangely as it had gone. So that afternoon she mused what she would do as, sitting in the garden of her cottage, she made a wreath of white lilies. ”

“ To illustrate, we will take the lower limb, whether there is lameness, soreness, gouty, rheumatic, neuralgic, swollen, shrunken, feverish, cold, smooth and glassy, sores, ulcers, erysipelas, milkleg, varicose veins, or any defect that the patient may complain of, who is the only reliable book or being of symptomatology. For convenience we will divide that lower limb into five parts, the foot, leg, thigh, pelvis and lumbar region. The patient (symptomatologist) tells us he has a pain in front, center and under part of foot. ”

“ Ganymede went pale to the lips, but he lifted the white burden in his arms, and carried her out. “I wish we hadn’t sent her,” he sighed to the Deputy Cloud-controller; “I would have gone myself, if I’d known.”
“I wish you had,” said the Deputy. “Both of us together are not worth her.”
Zeus had forgotten her. He could think only of the things he had known in that horrible hour. “I will never die again,” he said to himself; and for many nights he could not sleep.
“The weather’s rainy,” said the Muse of Astronomy, who had drawn a curtain back and was looking out. ”

“ The old life was done; the new life was beginning. Yet one night as he stood in a darkened room with Adela Constantia in his arms the door opened with a little quick click some few inches. She stepped back from him, thinking it was a servant, and he turned white, thinking, in a moment of madness, that it was someone else; then he went to the door and opened it wider. No one was there.
The position of the widower who marries again is irritating to him if he be, as Edward Morris was, a man of nice feeling. He has to say, and to believe, that he loves as he never loved in his life before. ”

“ We believe that static backache is essentially a mechanical disorder; that is, that it is the result of loss of balance producing local strain on the tissues in the lumbosacral region and elsewhere in the posterior musculature. We further believe, and regard it as our most essential point, that whatever the local mechanism which produces the symptoms may be, such backache is in a large proportion of all cases not a disease in itself (as suggested by such terms as "hysterical spine," "relaxation of the sacro-iliac joints," etc.) ”

“ Clinical Features.—This affection is almost always met with in adults, and the earliest symptoms are pain and weakness in the legs, and sometimes a slight kyphotic projection of the spinous processes. The loss of power, which is sometimes attended with spasticity, usually manifests itself in one leg first, and later affects the other; it is progressive, and ultimately ends in complete paraplegia. The pain is not confined to the region supplied by any one nerve root, but affects a diffuse area, and the patient complains also of a sensation of tightness in the limbs. ”

“ Acute pain in one of the right toes. Weight at the sacrum, but less bruising in the glutei muscles; weakness in the knee joints, with cracking, either in going up or down-stairs, 175. Sensation as if a warm liquid were flowing from a sore in the lumbar region. Heat mounting to the face, at seven o’clock in the evening. Weakness of the legs in going up or down-stairs.
Twenty-third day.—Restless night, heat and sweat all night. Dream about work, vast business. 180. Dizziness at two o’clock, waves before the eyes; the sight becomes dim when writing. ”

“ I have a sore, weak, bruised feeling all over the small of [Pg 101] my back; feels very weak when standing or moving about; better sitting or lying down.
No appetite for breakfast, but my stomach felt so weak and empty that I drank a cup of coffee and ate half a biscuit, which relieved to some extent.
9 a.m., am so nervous I cannot keep still and can hardly write down my symptoms.
9:30 o'clock, my back in lumbar and sacral region is so sore and weak I could hardly walk from the car to the office, every step seemed to jar my whole body and made my headache worse. ”

“ Two gorgeous butterflies chased one another over the lawn in the sunshine.
[2]
The plaited blind in front of the French windows was pushed back and Sir John Sweetling appeared on the verandah. He was a man of fifty-five, six feet in height and inclined to corpulence. On the whole a handsome man, with a short white beard and moustache neatly trimmed, and fearless blue eyes under shaggy white brows. The nose was perhaps a trifle nosey. He wore a white silk shirt, white ducks, a brown holland jacket and a panama of the finest texture.
Sir John lingered for a moment beside the parrot’s perch. ”

“ Only an over-sensitiveness to feelings or a false emotionalism can produce a pain of this kind, unless it should happen to be caused by some poison circulating in the blood. The trouble is not with the nerves or with the spine, despite the fad about misplaced vertebræ. When a doctor examines a sensitive spine, marking the sore spots with a blue pencil, and a few minutes later repeats the process, he finds almost invariably that the spots have shifted. They are not true physical pains and they rarely remain long in the same place. ”

“ The worst of an artificial cough in the hands—perhaps I should say, in the mouth—of a beginner is that it may come out with a hideous and unnatural loudness, when the cougher only intends it to be a mere whisper. My cough on this occasion surprised and horrified me. It seemed to ring through the church like the crack of a pistol. I felt that all the human eyes within a radius of twelve pews were staring the stare of pained surprise full at me, When I looked up I saw that Harry's back was shaking gently. ”

“ If, however, this plane of activity is raised, as by intermittent pressure, or by inflammatory action, or by sudden changes of temperature, as in burning, scalding, &c., such nervous impulses give rise to pain. Sometimes pain is distinctly located, and in other cases it may be irradiated in the nerve centres, and referred to areas of skin or to regions of the body which are not really the seat of the irritation. Thus irritation of the liver may cause pain in the shoulder; disease of the hip-joint often gives rise to pain in the knee ”

“ The capacity for pain is not needed in the muscle, and it is not placed there,—is but little needed in the skin, and only here and there over the thigh is a spot capable of feeling pain. Pain is simply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us and stimulate us. Not all living flesh is painful; nor is all nerve, not even all sensory nerve. There’s no taint of pain, real pain, in the sensations of the optic nerve. ”