Nervous diseases : their description and treatment / by Allan McLane Hamilton.

  • Allan McLane Hamilton
Date:
1878
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nervous diseases : their description and treatment / by Allan McLane Hamilton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/540 (page 30)
    INTRODUCTION. may cli;t(>nninc after consulting the really convincing articles of Loring.* Arbuckle,'' Albutt, and others, which ])rove beyond question that the fundus of the eye is rarely any index of the cerebral circulation. Bouchut,* Panas,5 Albutt, Ilanunond,' Bell, and others, have written extensively, and have furnished a large number of clinical reports of oph- thalmoscopic changes coexistent with cerebral tumors, meningitis, soften- ing, effusion, cerebral hemorrhage, general paralysis, locomotor ataxia and other forms of sclerosis, epile[)sy, and the sypiiilitic and ura'mic neu- roses. Hutchinson,'* of Philadelphia, in an admirable article, gives many of these cases, and shows the real value of the ophthalmoscope, especially when an examination of the fundus reveals choked disk and optic neuritis, but I will speak more fully in regard to this subject when we come to the discussion of special diseases. APPARATUS FOR THE TREATMENT OF NERVOUS DISEASE. Electrical—Two forms of apparatus are required—one for the gal- vanic, the otlier for the induced or Faradic currents—as well as the necessary electrodes. As we know, the galvanic current is derived directly from a battery or pile, the first ordinarily consisting of two elements, which are contained in a vessel filled with some exciting solution, and the latter of plates of metal placed one above the other, and separated by disks of felt or paper moistened with a solution of salt or acid. This last apparatus is rarely used. One vessel or cell of the form I first described constitutes a simple bat- ' Am. Psychological Journal, Nov. 1876. ^ West Riding Reports, vol. v. p. 148. ^ Dr. Loring says, in concluding an admirable paper: By the experiipents considered in the foregoing remarks two alternatives are forcibly presented to our mind : either that the circulation of the eye is not a reflex of the circulation of the brain, though derived directly from it; and thus agents which affect pro- foundly the one have little or no influence on the other ; or, if the retinal circu- lation is a reflex of the cerebral, it follows that tlie influence exerted on the cir- culation of the braiu by agents at our command, remedial or otherwise, is very much less than heretofore supposed. I cannot but think that the former alternative is the more rational, and from that vei'y independence of tiie two circulations there is reason to fear, so far as functional, and especially mental diseases, are concerned, that there never will be, any more; than there now is, any art to read the mind's constniction in the eye. ■» Du Diagnostic des Maladies du System Kervcu.x par 1'Ophthalmoscope. Paris, 187G. 6 La Prance M6dicale, Feb. 2C, 187G. 6 Med. Times and Gaz., vol. i., p. 495, and scq. > Diseases of the Nervous System. New York, 1876. 8 Phil. Med. Times, May 8, 1875.