On the seat of headache in the sympathetic nerve, and on some of the rules of treatment, drawn from its connexion with chronic ill health / by William Seller.
- Date:
- 1848
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the seat of headache in the sympathetic nerve, and on some of the rules of treatment, drawn from its connexion with chronic ill health / by William Seller. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![these filaments, distributed along with the encephalic ca])ilkrie8, are the immediate instruments of sensation in headache affecting the substance of the cncephalon, whether the primary central acts be dependent on the cervical ganglia, or on the cervical portion of the spinal cord. The small amount of nervous substance contained in the plexuses surrounding the carotid and vertebral arteries, hardly forms any objection to this view, when it is considered that, com- pared to its volume, the encephalon, owing to its unusual supply of blood, and the general fluidity of its constituents, contains but a small proportion of matter in a solid state of organization, or in a form capable of having sensibility imparted to it. It is a vahd reason in favom of this view, that the same principle of explanation is applicable to what seems at first sight an anomaly in the observations made on the spinal marrow, and the trmiks of the nerves of sense. The following is Muller's statement of tliis case— An apparent contradiction occurs in the nerves of sense and in the spinal cord, namely, that there is sometimes pain in the pai't to which the irritation is applied, as well as in the extreme filaments, and that pain is not merely felt in all the parts which receive nerves from below the seat of a lesion of the spinal cord, but that the injm-ed or diseased part itself is painful. * * * ysfe are at present ignorant why sensations should at one time be felt in the peripheral ]Darts ; at another, in the spinal cord itself. ^ The solution of this difficulty is easy, if it be admitted that filaments of the sympathetic accom- pany the capillaries of the spinal cord and of the sentient nen^es. When the sensory columns of the spinal cord, or the trmik of a sen- tient nerve, is subjected to any common stimulus, the consciousness of the consequent sensation is referred, in accordance with the ordinary law, to the extremities of the nervous filaments which have thus been stimulated, whether at their origin or in any part of then com'se. But when a more permanent stimulus operates at the same points, by which the capillary circulation at those pouats is much excited, then the sensibUity of the filaments of the sympathetic distributed there is developed, and the consciousness of the sensation is referred to the extremities of these in the part acted on. Nor is it sm^- prising that a considerable tui'gescence of capillaiy vessels should rather affect the nervous filaments spread on their own coats, than the filaments of the nerve which they nourish. There is, moreover, an objection to the explanation of s3^nptonl- atic headache by the reflection of sensation, which does not apply to the view here maintained. If a sensation be reflected in the neiTous centre to other nervous filaments than those by which the impres- sion was conveyed thither, we should expect that the primary sensa- tion and the reflected sensation would be unifonnly of the same kind. Hence, if intense pain of the head be ]iroduccd by reflection to the nerves of the dura mater, or of the scalp, from a primary irrita-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21956297_0010.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
