19th Cent meaning of Spasm....

Artemis · #1 (**permalink**) 7th June 2002, 07:14 PM

Hi,

I need to know if anyone has a 19th Century (early 1800's) dictionary?

I'm trying to find out what SPASM meant in that time. A friend of mine is doing some research on a famous poetess (UK) of that time, and noticed when she searched through all the death records LOTS of people's cause of death were listed as SPASM. Surely not all those people had epilepsy, so I've been trying to find out more. I found an online 1913 Dictionary, but that wasn't clear enough.....nor is it close to the time I need it for (almost 100 years before).

This poetess died a mysterious death. She was found with a bottle of Prussic Acid in her hand. Her doctor had not prescribed it. Her chemist had not prepared it. She got it from another chemist. She told her husband, who was worried about her using it, she needed it for 'spasms'. I suspect she might have found out about Homeopathy and had a homeopathic preparation? But can't be sure if Prussic Acid was used in its crude form in those days - so this might be a possibility as well? If so, what was it commonly used for? What kind of spasm? What was spasm commonly know as in those days?

Any info would really be appreciated.

[ 08 June 2002, 18:18: Message edited by: Artemis ]

Melin · #2 (**permalink**) 7th June 2002, 09:01 PM

Hi Artemis,

What an intriguing mystery to be solving. I cannot provide any helpful information but I can't wait to hear what others have to say. I wonder if old medical texts would be a better source than a dictionary. Just a thought!

BTW, who is the poetess?

Happy hunting

Melin

Artemis · #3 (**permalink**) 8th June 2002, 05:57 AM

Hi Melin,
Thanks.
The poetess is Elizabeth Landon (better known in her writings as L.E.L.)....died in Ghana in 1839 (believe that date is right).

I tried to find old medical dictionaries/texts online, but to no avail for the time I need (not even within 100 yrs).

Anyone else, please?

sreischman · #4 (**permalink**) 8th June 2002, 12:00 PM

I have a medical dictionary that was published in 1900 by W. B. Saunders Company and compiled by Newman Dorland. Spasm has almost an entire page devoted to it, mostly definitions similar to our use of the word. However, a few did stand out as possible causes of death. One definition was spasm of the bronchial tubes as in asthma and the other was a cerebral spasm due to a lesion.

Artemis · #5 (**permalink**) 8th June 2002, 02:51 PM

Thank you, sreichman.
That is very similar to what I've found too. I gather it meant epilepsy-type of convulsions, asthmatic-type contractions/spasm, and one dictionary I found said angina-like pains due to emotions or some sort of shock/trauma. But, I hadn't seen the 'cerebral spasm due to a lesion'. Wonder what that one means? Stroke/apoplexy? Maybe that isn't it.

The search continues. Thanks for trying to help.

Artemis · #6 (**permalink**) 9th June 2002, 07:04 AM

Hi, I got some detailed info on Elizabeth Landon from my friend.......

Clues to help solve what caused her death; suicide, accidental poisoning; or ????

**************************************************
The following are excerpts from the email my friend sent to me:
**************************************************

Quote:

late 1835
--?day, LEL ill as a result of rumors of her illicit affairs, "inflammation of liver" mentioned in letter to Forster.

[Blanchard says on her bouts of illness: "At seasons of strong mental excitement, or of much bodily exhaustion; L. E. L. had been not merely subject to spasmodic affections, but had been known to sink down in fainting fits, so deep and instantaneous, as to create, for some minutes possibly, the most naural apprehensions, that death had taken place, or that life, if not quite extinct, was beyond hope" (1:230) (see entry on her departure]

And another

Quote:

late 1835?
-- no date??? --- wm. howitt, homes/haunts 2: 139:

"During the agonies of mind which Miss Landon suffered, at a time when calumny was dealing very freely with her name, her old friend, and for a long time, co-inmate, Miss Roberts came in one day, and found her very much agitated.

‘Have those horrible reports, she eagerly inquired, ‘got into the papers, Miss Roberts?’ Miss Roberts assured her they had not. ‘If they do,’ she exclaimed, opening a drawer in the table, and taking out a vial, ‘I am resolved -- here is my remedy!’ The vial was a vial of prussic acid. This fact I have on the authority of the late Emma Roberts herself."

[no way wm. howitt would lie, nor could emma roberts lie, when she did not in her memoir of lel, where she could have disclosed such]

and....

Quote:

1838
-- ?days, Blanchard says LEL suffered spasmodic fits "once or twice previous departure" and was observed by one woman, who told LB she thought LEL died then (1:231; see 1835 entry on illness); LB: "with much mental excitement, there was extreme bodily exhaustion, at the time of her decease accustomed as she was to frequent pain, and strong in the endurance of it";

and....some of her physical reactions as quoted/described by various people at the time:

Quote:

her illness/physical reactions

-- Mansan: "very impatient under pain"

-- "wretchedly ill" during voyage

-- in letter to TCC of 1831 she states that her feet must be up while writing because : "It is a species of chronic inflamation in the joints arising from debility under which I am suffering." --

[need to know what disease whose byproduct is inflammation in the joints" -- what is debility??/]

-- very strange that when LEL heard her brother was elected Secretary of Literary Fund, she said to TCCroker, "when I heard of our success the blood rushed from my nose and mouth in torrents." (letter 14 April 1837)

-- Greer (SS 270): late in life, the overworked LEL’s "outraged organism began to revenge itself. Her hidden neurasthenia burst out in strange diseases, epileptioid fainting fits, asthmatic seizures, ‘spasms’."

-- emmaroberts/memoir,zenana, 13

-- "There was, however, a degree of perhaps constitutional irritability about L. E. L.'s
disposition, which was manifested . . . when highly excited, sometimes from no other cause than the workings of her own imagination, she suffered from a sensation of atmospheric oppression, which notwithstanding any inclemency of the weather, could only be relieved by rapid motion in the open air." -- pace for hours in the garden, or a wider space

-- 14 -- "susceptibility of her nervous system" -- LEL "very impatient under pain"

-- "she seemed to suffer more than others from spasms or cramps, or any transient attack of the kind, . . . and has alarmed her companions frequently by a sudden paroxysm, for which the cause subsequently alleged seemed quite inadequate."

-- 15 emma: "I have stood at her side when her mental suffering -- . . . could distress of mind have driven her to so fatal an act, I cannot but think that it would have been committed long ago."

-- 28 -- lately her health-- "very severe attacks of illness, the moment that she rallied she became as gay and cheerful as ever;" --

Now, I'm going through them.....thinking it through.

I hope someone here will be interested in helping to solve the mystery. My friend will send me more, as she finds symptoms in the myriad of texts she possesses.

Artemis

Divina · #7 (**permalink**) 9th June 2002, 06:51 PM

The descriptions sound like Grand Mal seizures--close to what G. Greer describes as "epileptoid". Not very long ago, epilepsy was a disease which people tried desperately to hide from others. Now we know that the seizures can be brought on by emotional causes as well as physical stress--the kind you might get from travel, emotional distress, etc. etc. It is not unusual for this type of seizure (or spasm, a much more general word which would have been applied to the the disease) to result from an injury to the head; though I would say that the type of ailments described as spasms--the asthmatic spasms, etc. etc., are the kind of "spasms" Prussic Acid or Hydrocyanic Acid can cause when it is taken in crude or potentized form. L. E. L. may not have exhibited all these "spasmodic" symptoms at all, or to the same degree as those recorded in the provings and clinical data of the remedy.

The only way to tell whether or not L.E.L. had heard of homeopathy and was treating her seizures with the Hydrocyanic Acid would be to find concrete evidence of the legendary vial--to check out whether or not she was applying The Law of Similars with a crude form of the substance (self-treating with the poison, and not with a remedy) or a potentized form (which could have caused a proving or an aggravation). She may have simply tried to kill herself with the poison, though that documented conversation with the friend seems to refute that.

Sounds VER-R-R-Y interesting....do keep us up to date on what your friend finds out!

Divina

Divina · #8 (**permalink**) 9th June 2002, 06:58 PM

Hey! Think about this:

What if Lizzy HAD gone to see a homeopath about her condition--which does correspond well with the MM description of the Hydrocyanic Acid...
and she did receive a vial of a potentized remedy, which she took when needed (say, before the onset of a "spasm", which she could of course feel coming on).

Considering how well known homeopathy was way back then, wouldn't it be easy for anyone who intended to murder her to substitute a crude dose of the substance for her remedy? Only a very little of the crude stuff would be necessary to kill her...

so the murder could be committed with the victim's full participation...

Just thinking aloud...
Divina

Artemis · #9 (**permalink**) 9th June 2002, 08:24 PM

Thank you, Divina!

Actually, I suspected she might have seeked homeopathic treatment - stumbled upon it....

I sent an email to my friend this morning - asking her to find more in her records of what LEL was documented as saying in relation to her symptoms BEFORE the time she began taking Prussic Acid AND AFTER taking Prussic Acid to see if I could figure out if there was any change to her symptoms. Long shot? Maybe, but where else to start?

I'm still unclear as to what LEL suffered from. Epileptiod seizures? Asthmatic spasms (if so, did those come on AFTER starting on Prussic Acid?)? So many questions.....and I suggested a rough time line of what LEL said along with any quotes from people who knew/observed her when she was ill. Maybe that will lead us to firmer answers.

I liked your thoughts with regard to the possibility that if she were using a homeopathic remedy - that maybe someone spiked it with a crude bit of Prussic Acid, thus poisoning her --- murdering her. Hm, sounds possible.

If you think of anything else, please post again! I really appreciate it!

Artemis · #10 (**permalink**) 10th June 2002, 02:02 PM

My friend sent me one more thing she ran across today....this really makes me wonder..... Any inkling why she'd use leeches in the context of her other symptoms....?

Quote:

no idea why landon in this state with her leeches in 1835:

-- 30 April -- LEL writes Richard Bentley, complaining about the state of the copy she’s been sent, with two poems together that have no relation, and that her translations have been lost and she has had to redo them, but she’s willing to redo more -- tomorrow, not today, for she’s in bed with leeches on her side today

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