Volume 2

On spasm, languor, palsy, and other disorders, termed nervous, of the muscular system / by James Arthur Wilson.

  • Wilson, James Arthur, 1795-1882.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On spasm, languor, palsy, and other disorders, termed nervous, of the muscular system / by James Arthur Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be overlooked; and that the partnership of flesh and blood, maintained in the physiology of all ages, will not be dissolved by the physicians of the present day. This comparative neglect of the muscle, in the catalogue of ills “that flesh is heir to,” finds its explan- ation partly in the almost exclusive attention that has been given by nosologists of late years to the organic alterations effected in structure by disease; the Morbid Anatomy, as it 1s termed, of systematic medicine. Few changes are induced in the fleshy structure by disease; and thus, from what we observe by dis- section of these organs after death, we are seldom reminded of the importance and severity of the symp- toms they may have presented during the various stages of protracted previous illness. Again, there is a disparagement of the entire muscle in the theory which regards its nerve as the sole agent of the influ- ences that determine the contraction of the fleshy fibre, thus rendering a part of the organ paramount in the discharge of the function required from the struc- ture in its completeness and integrity. Under this prevailing error in physiology, the wide open relations of the muscle with the other parts of the animal frame are continually narrowed and con- fused; and that which is in truth the most inde- pendent of living things, the self-contracting fibre, becomes subordinate in the ‘ system,” to the nervous structures, appended and secondary in their nature, with a function essentially representative of actions that never originate in themselves. Between the blood and the nerve there are at pre-
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