On the seat of headache in the sympathetic nerve, and on some of the rules of treatment, drawn from its connexion with chronic ill health / William Seller, M.D.

  • Seller, William.
Date:
1848
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the seat of headache in the sympathetic nerve, and on some of the rules of treatment, drawn from its connexion with chronic ill health / William Seller, M.D. 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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    proved. It violates the ordinary simplicity of physiological laws. Yet were it discovered that there is no such phenomenon as the reflection of sensation, and that no nervous filaments accompany the encephalic capillaries, while it distinctly appeared that the chief part of the substance of the encephalon becomes, under certain con- ditions, the immediate seat of the consciousness of pain, then we shoidd be compelled to admit two laws of sensation, one in which nerves are essential instruments, and one direct, without the inter- vention of nerves. But no such necessity is likely to arise. As regards the third view, which ascribes headache affecting the encephalon to the ordinary process of sensation, exercised by means of minute nervous filaments spreading from the sympathetic through- out its substance, it must be admitted that the existence of such nerves cannot be demonstrated. Nevertheless, the evidence falls little short of demonstrative. It is not doubted by our best autho- rities, that the sympathetic is distributed in the rest of the body co- extensively with the vascular system. Our most recent accounts of the process of inflammation, to which all vascular parts are sub- ject, assign an important share in that process to the nerves of the capillaries. What would become of these views did the capillaries of the encephalon possess no nervous filaments ? If the conclusion be all but inevitable, that the sympathetic is spread elsewhere co- extensively with the bloodvessels, nothing but a confusion of ideas as to the endowments of the nervous substance could lead to the belief of an exception in regard to the bloodvessels of the encepha- lon. But the foi'ce of this evidence, as far as it goes, being ad- mitted, it may yet be said that the nervous filaments accompanying the capillary bloodvessels are not sentient but organic nerves— nerves not destined to become susceptible of pain, but for the maintenance of nutrition and a high vitality. The sympathetic has all the characters of a nerve adapted for presiding over organic rather than over animal acts. Yet it contains both motor and sen- sitive filaments. It is an incontrovertible fact, that parts supplied exclusively with nerves from this source—for example, the bowels— are susceptible of the most acute pain.' It is not unlikely that the general feeling of bodily wellbeing, and that of bodily discomfort, are dependent on opposite states of the vascular filaments of this system of nerves; and, indeed, Bouillaud has expressly ascribed the latter feeling to such a cause. It is not necessary for the object before us to settle whether the sympathetic be an independent portion of the nervous system, and what is the nature of its con- nexion with the cerebro-spinal axis. It is enough if it shall appear that there are sentient filaments in the sympathetic; and that 1 See Swan ou Diseases of the Nerves, 1834, ]). 280 ; Grainger on the Spinal Cord, p. 136 ; Muller, Physiology, hy Baly, vol. i. p. 742 ; and Todd and Bow- man, Physiology, Part Third, p. 143.