THE BURSTING SICKNESS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 239, 8 October 1874, Page 2

THE BURSTING SICKNESS.

A .most singular and unaccountable disease, says a la.c number of the New York Graphic, commonly known as the bursting sickness, has broken out in this vicioity, and already has spread to many of the neighboriug villages and cities. The people are in consternation by reason of tho many deaths tbat have occurred. The doctors — wretched medical men at the best — are at a loss how to deal with the trouble, and the priests have their hands full. Tlalenango, Bolanos, Cartbagena and even Sanceda Hae ere suffering more or less, and there is no telling where or when the disease is to stop. lam not an expert in tbe description ' of sickness, but the trouble seems to me to be an unusual discharge of nerve force into the brain. The symptoms are sudden nausea, followed almost immediately by a severe and sharp painaloog the spine, proceeding from its lower extremity to the head, and described as though a blunt knife were scraping upward. There is then — when the pain reaches the back of the head — a sbort and poignant distress there which makes the patient delirious, although it never produces unconsciousness or loss of the right use of the senses. The eyes are bloodshot und wild, with pupils greatly contracted. The sensitiveness to light is intense, so that even in paroxysms of excruciating agony tbe patient will rise and seek a dark place. This state lasts commonly not more than from thirty to forty minutes, duting which the patient feels as if bis bead was splitting; and when this condition has lasted for about half an hour the cranium actually bursts open at the sutures, as is sometimes the case with infants whose heads split thus after death from water on tbe brain. The sound produced by thi*. rending asunder of tbe bones of the skull can plainly be beard full ten feet from tbe patient. It ia said that in some instances the disruption is extremely sudden, and accompanied with a noise still louder. This occurs, too, at a moment when the sufferer is in full consciousness, and it is most terrible to witness. The disease broke out at the silver mining region nt Bolanos about two weeks ago, and its cause is unknown. About three hundred persons, generally adults, bave already died of it, aud it is yet spreading. The sickness is, so far as I know, as unique as it is singular. TRS N