Studies on functional nervous disorders.

  • Jones, C. Handfield (Charles Handfield), 1819-1890.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Studies on functional nervous disorders. 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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    would have fallen if he had not been supported. This occurred several times during the day. Since this he has had at least fifty such seizures. They seldom last more than four or five minutes^ and sometimes less; but during that time he is perfectly insensible. He never is convulsed or froths at the mouth during the fits^ but he has occasionallj injured his tongue. His pulse was sloWj onlj 28 or 30. Premonitory sensations were at first referred to the stomachy but some months later^ when the attack had diminished very much, to the right shoulder. When occurring in this latter situation, they were often unattended with loss of consciousness. What most concerns our present subject is, that the attacks became greatly less frequent as his health improved, and especially that on two occasions he warded off an impending fit by the following manoeuvre ■—as soon as he perceives the premonitory symptoms, he directly turns on his hands and knees, keeping his head low, and by this means he often averts (he says) what would otherwise end in an attack. Gooch's own personal experience, as he describes it, illustrates well the chief effects of cerebral ansemia in a chronic form. He says, any one who from long defect in the organs of nutrition is reduced so that he has neither flesh on his body nor blood in his veins, well knows what it is to lay down his head and doze away half the day without any congestion or inflammation of the brain. It is clear that in most cases, in all except those where cerebral ansemia is suddenly induced during a state of health, the condition will not be one of pure diminution of blood-supply, but of diminished and altered blood-supply. The system will be not only anaemic, but spansemic, Eurther, this state cannot exist for any length of time without modifying injuriously the nutrition of the brain, and rendering it more excitable and weak, according to the general law which we see so constantly exemplified. This altered vital quality of the great nervous centres may exercise a considerable influence on the subsequent phenomena, as has already been shown by the above-quoted statements of Kussmaul and Tenner. It is a most important fact observed by these excellent inquirers, that arrest of the blood-supply to a muscle, and the nervous apparatus with which it is connected, produces at first spasmodic contraction, followed after a time by complete paralysis. This is true in the case of the iris and the sphincter ani, and, no doubt, holds good with regard to the other muscles of the body. Suddenly with- held nutrition causes a sudden commotion, and molecular chansre