Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/183

 a lost limb.' His clear account of the case of the man with the withered hand, which the non-medical reader will be able to follow without difficulty, is worth quoting in full.

'In the story of the man with the withered hand it is probable that we have to do with another case of paralysis; and if so, we may assume with considerable confidence that the case was one of "infantile paralysis." This is the affection to which at the present day nearly all the instances of "withered hand" or of "withered leg" are owing. A child who has been in good health, or has suffered perhaps from a few days of feverishness, is found to have lost power in an arm or leg. The limb hangs flaccid and motionless. The muscles are found to be wasting when the limb is examined a week or two later, and the limb to be cold. For a month or two there may be a little recovery of movement. This soon stops, and the arm or leg remains ever after more or less powerless and shrunken and cold. Normal growth is largely checked, and, in addition to the actual atrophy and arrest of development, various contractions and deformities become established as time goes on. After death the muscles are found to have become much diminished and shrunken, and throughout a certain portion of the spinal cord, corresponding