Abstract
The pain of trigeminal neuralgia was for many years considered so distinctive in type and severity as to deserve the restrictive designation, "tic douloureux." Why this particular nerve should alone be subject to this paroxysmal, ticlike type of pain and all the other cranial and spinal sensory nerves be seemingly immune, has never had a rational explanation. As a matter of fact, pain of the same type does occur in the distribution of the glossopharyngeal nerve, so that the term "tic douloureux" is no longer synonymous with trigeminal neuralgia, but must now include glossopharyngeal neuralgia. Whether similar pains of the facial, vagus and possibly of other sensory nerves will eventually be found to be of similar kind, remains to be seen. Weisenburg1was apparently the first to direct attention to the resemblance of an unusual pain of the ninth nerve to the so-called idiopathic pain of tic douloureux of

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