Comments on convulsive diseases / by Charles Bland Radcliffe.

  • Radcliffe, Charles Bland, 1822-1889.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Comments on convulsive diseases / by Charles Bland Radcliffe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    the window-curtains) marks the hour of waking almost as exactly as in the canary, whose cage hangs in the nursery. Many additional considerations will suggest themselves to the mind of the reader, and we would willingly have dilated upon them under other circumstances; but sufficient has been said to direct atten- tion to the proper method of inquiry, and not only so, but (as we would presume) to allow us to argue, that the main cause of the periodicity of sleep and wakefulness, and other diurnal phe- nomena, is to be found in the revolutions of our planet upon her axis, any seeming irregularity being produced by disturbing agen- cies under our own control, which agencies supply vital force, and so enable us to keep alive when the grand natural source and fountain of vitality—the sun—is withdrawn. The same mode of inquiry will enable us to understand that the monthly movements of the economy, in spite of seeming irregularities, are chiefly ascribable to the moon. It is evident, for example, that the period of menstruation is not contem- poraneous in all women, neither is it always correspondent with any certain age of the moon in the same woman; but the argu- ments we have already used will show that this is the necessary consequence of the differences of diet and habit which prevail. If these be corrected, as they are to a certain extent in large asylums, the conformity is so great, and so distinctly related in all to the same age of the moon, as to lead us to conclude that any difference would altogether cease, if the habits and diet were adjusted with a little more accuracy. Another reason for con- fusion in these matters is found in the careless habit of referring to the moon alone, as if she were the sole orb which acted upon the frame; whereas, to arrive at any correct result, it is evident that she must be considered as associated with, and assisted or antagonised by, the sun; for as the oceanic tides are not to be explained without taking into consideration this conjoined agency, neither are the ebbs and floods which sway the streams of animate nature. And, finally, any remaining obscurity as to the chief cause of diurnal or monthly periodicity is made to disappear when we consider the vital changes which preserve a yearly period, and keep pace with the summer and winter; for in this case there can be no manner of doubt that the changes are mainly depen- dent upon the seasons; indeed, so little individual energy is there in plants or in the lower animals, that they may be said to live and die in mute obedience to the outer necessity. In considerations of this nature, we find the clue to the inter-