Researches on epilepsy : its artificial production in animals, and its etiology, nature and treatment in man : first part of a new series of experimental and clinical researches applied to physiology and pathology / by E. Brown Séquard.

  • Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches on epilepsy : its artificial production in animals, and its etiology, nature and treatment in man : first part of a new series of experimental and clinical researches applied to physiology and pathology / by E. Brown Séquard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    10/100 page 4
    pathology and treatment of epilepsy. I will also give a detailed account of some of the facts 1 have observed in animals, because these facts throw a great deal of light upon the phenomena of epilepsy in man. §1. I have found that the following kinds of injury to the spinal cord are able to produce epilepsy, or at least a disease resembling epilepsy, in animals belonging to different species, but mostly upon guinea-pigs. 1st. A complete transversal section of a lateral' half of this organ. 2d. A transversal section of its two posterior columns, of its posterior cornua of gray matter, and of a part of the lateral columns. 3d. A transversal section of either the posterior columns or the lateral, or the anterior alone. 4th. A complete transversal section of the whole organ. 5th. A simple puncture. Of all these injuries, the first, the second and the fourth seem to have more power to produce epilepsy than the others. The first particularly, i. e., the section of a lateral half of the spinal cord, seems to produce constantly this disease in animals that live longer than three or four weeks after the operation. After a section of either the lateral, the anterior or the posterior columns alone, epi- lepsy rarely appears, and it seems that in the cases where it has been produced, there has been a deeper incision than usual, and that part of the gray matter has been attained. In other experi- ments, fcAV in number, the section of the central gray matter (the white being hardly injured) has been followed by this convulsive disease. I have seen it but very rarely after a simple puncture of the cord. It is particularly after injuries to the part of the spinal cord which extends from the seventh or eighth dorsal vertebra to the third lum- bar, that epilepsy appears. >§> II. Usually this affection begins during the third or fourth week after the injury. In some cases I have seen it beginning dur- ing the second week, and even one or two days before. At first the fit consists only in a spasm of the muscles of the face and neck, either on one or the two sides, according to the transversal extent of the injury. One eye or both are forcibly shut, the head is drawn
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3