Physiological, anatomical and pathological researches / by John Reid.

  • Reid, John, 1809-1849.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiological, anatomical and pathological researches / by John Reid. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    do so. Professor R. B. Todd* has given the details of several experiments upon the contractility of paralyzed limbs in the human species, and obtained results adverse to the opinion of Dr. Marshall Hall, referred to above, that in paralysis from lesion of the spinal cord and from the brain, this property of contractility is differently affect- ed, and that the muscles derive their contractility from the spinal cord. It is stated in a note in the above memoir, that the ap- plication of some of the experiments I had described, to the treatment of certain cases of paralysis, is so obvious as to require no illustration; for if these experiments be cor- rect, it necessarily follows that the muscles of paralyzed limbs will be kept from wasting, and retain their property of contractility when exercised daily by the transmission of a galvanic current through them, and thus time may be given for the nervous system to recover its power of trans- mitting outwards the motive influence of volition, and sub- jecting these muscles again to the action of the will, before their property of contractility has been destroyed by the deficient nutrition consequent upon the state of complete inaction into which they would otherwise have been thrown. The effect of even the occasional contractions of muscles thus circumstanced in arresting wasting from deficient nu- trition, is well exemplified in a case of Hysteric Paraplegia, mentioned by Dr. Carpenter;2 and Professor Paget,3 in speaking of this method of treatment, adds— in one case in which I could act upon it, the plan was encouraging.] 1 London Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. xxx., p. 207. 1847. 2 Principles of Human Physiology, 3d edit., p. 443. 3 Medical Gazette for 6th August 1847.