Epilepsy; its symptoms, treatment, and relation to other chronic convulsive diseases / [Sir J. Russell Reynolds].

  • John Russell Reynolds
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epilepsy; its symptoms, treatment, and relation to other chronic convulsive diseases / [Sir J. Russell Reynolds]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    this; that, althoiigh some indi^dcluaJs are quite free from such error, many rest content with assigning the name epilepsy to the malady under which a patient suffers ; and they thus put a stop to all fiu-ther inquiry into the case; regarding it either as hope- lessly incui-able, or as curable only by the chance emplojonent of some so-called specific which might suit the case. Thus, the treatment of a large group of very different diseases has been thro^vn back into the empirical condition from which all scientific practitioners have, for many years, sought to deliver the healing art. A second evil has affected both pathology and nosology. The practice of retaining one name, epilepsy—^however qualified by such terms as idiopathic, symptomatic, sjonpathetic, and the like—^has thrown too much importance upon the similarity of forms of disease, and too Kttle upon their points of essential difference. It has groupe.d together cases presenting resem- blance in superficial or accidental features,—such as the form and order of convulsive movements,—although they have been so widely separated in important characters as are syphilitic menin- gitis, urina^mic convulsions from Bright's disease, the fits of dentition or dyspepsia, and the idiopathic malady which we teiTa true, uncomphcated epilepsy. Such a method of constructing a nosology has inverted the true principle of classification; sub- stituting the more important character for the less important; and doing this in circumstances where such error is most preju- dicial to the science of pathology, and its practical application. If there are cases, and it cannot be doubted that there are, in which nothing morbid can be discovered, either in structure or function, over and above the occurrence of certain paroxj'sms of convulsion ; and if to these the name epilepsy is to be applied, as it has been for a long period in the history of medi- cine, then those cases which present convulsions, and other symptoms which are clearly traceable either to changes in the blood, or definite diseases of the nervous centres, or of other organs, should be denoted by some different name. The difference between them is one of essential character; and, instead of being
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