Essays on the theory of convulsive diseases / by Marshall Hall.

  • Marshall Hall
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on the theory of convulsive diseases / by Marshall Hall. 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.

    12/74 page 12
    But science ought to be pursued for its own sake, irre- spective of consequences, and the reward should be in the conscience. It is with these views that I beg, this evening, to submit to this Society the following observations on the nature of the convulsive affections of infants and children,—observa- tions which are the first—or amongst the first—of a series of Contributions from the Science of Physiology to the Art and Practice of Medicine. It has long been the habit of the indolent of our profession to decry physiology, and especially experiment. I will venture to affirm, that such persons are incapable of grasping the ques- tion which I am about to discuss—viz. the nature, diagnosis, and treatment of convulsive diseases and of their eflfects. The greater part of this question is involved in the recent in- vestigation relative to the excited reflex actions; and he who has not witnessed, or whose eye is not familiar with, these phenomena, as displayed in experiments, is utterly unpre- pared to comprehend, and to treat adequately, the class of convulsive diseases. Books cannot convey this knowledge. Books do not contain it. We have only to read the attempts to apply the principle of the excited reflex actions to practice, even by those who might seem to know something of the matter, to perceive the utter insufficiency of book-knowledge for this purpose. No. He who would conscientiously perform his duty as a physician, in these affections, must submit to the drudgery, often fraught with pain as well as toil, of reading the book of Nature. He must have both his eye and his mind tutored to distinguish between the effects of volition, the phenomena of emotion, and the reflex actions of the excito-motor power. With an eye so tutored, there is no danger of mistaking the phenomena of convulsive diseases. All is plain, simple, useful. The practical physiologist, the physiological phy- sician, sees, that strabismus, the contracted finger, the con- tracted toe, are one and the same kind of affection, in differ- ent parts of the muscular system ; that the partial closure of the larynx, inducing laryngismus stridulus, and the total clo- sure of the larynx, suspending the respiration ; that strangury and tenesmus, are of the same nature, only seated in other and more vital or important organs ; lastly, that the general con-
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