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.

  • Brown-Séquard, Charles-Edouard, 1817-1894.
Date:
1857
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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.

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    ■warm sponge, &c. If any part is the seat of a pain, even if this pain seems to have no relation with the fits, it will be necessary to ascertain whether pressure, galvanism, &c., applied upon this part, produce an attack. If it is in a limb that a pain exists, a ligature will decide the relation of the painful spot with the fits. In cases where there is a cramp in some of the muscles, or in one only, at the beginning of the fit, the inducement of a cramp by galvanism might decide if the attack is due to the irritation of the sensitive nerve of the contracted muscle, or if the cramp is nothing but a manifestation of the attack. If the initial cramp exists in a limb, an elongation of the contracted muscle, or a ligature, might lead to the solution of the question.* The danger of producing a fit by the employment of some of the means that I have indicated as good to decide if there is an unfelt irritation arising from the skin, or from some muscle, and causing the fits, is not a reason to prevent our making use of these means, because the existence of a fit, particularly when we are prepared for it, is a small evil in comparison with the great benefit that may be derived from such a trial. In my animals, nothing in the skin of the face and neck (except a slight congestion, which perhaps is the result of the pinching, and other modes of excitation that I employ) indicates that this part has such a power as that which it alone possesses, to cause fits when irritated. It results from this fact, that it would be quite wrong to decide, a priori, that an epileptic man, in whom the skin seems to be perfectly healthy, cannot have fits produced by an irritation of some parts of his skin. Even in such a case, therefore, it would be necessary to employ the various means I have indicated, to decide the influence of the skin on the production of the fits. § XII. In many of the preceding parts of this paper I have strongly insisted on the influence of the aura epileptica, or of a peculiar kind of irritation of the peripheric nerves, as causes of epileptic fits. I must now show that I was right in this respect. Herpin, in his important .work which I have so often quoted [lo- co cit.,]). 421), tries to prove that the phenomena of the aura epileptica are nothing but the result of a cramp in one or in more * No one will imilale a surgeon, cited by Portal {loco cii., p. 135), who performed an ampula- on of one of the toes, because the movements of this toe were very violent during the fit!