writer's cramp

Painful, spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the hand or fingers, resulting from writing for too long a time.

Writers' Cramp (sometimes called Scriveners' Palsy), a condition which occasionally follows the overstraining of groups of muscles, and is met with among those who are engaged in occupations which require the exercise of particular voluntary muscles of the upper and lower extremities of an excessive degree; as editors, clerks, telegraphers, dancers, etc. Writers' cramp is more rare among those who write and meanwhile compose, than among clerks and copyists; and the condition is, therefore, the result of an over-developed automatism.

Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.