Railway accidents or collisions : their effects upon the nervous system : the substance of a paper read before the Harveian Medical Society / by William Camps.
- Camps, William.
- Date:
- 1866
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Railway accidents or collisions : their effects upon the nervous system : the substance of a paper read before the Harveian Medical Society / by William Camps. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![notice, that in not a few cases of claims for compensation for injuries, the symptoms observable in sufferers from railway accidents or collisions, are assigned by the medical examiners engaged to give evidence, either on the part of the Railway Company, or on the part of the injured person, as being those symptoms which indicate the existence of Hysteria, or the pre- sence of what are called Hysterical Symptoms. If the views that I entertain on this subject, be hereafter proved to be in consonance with received and established prin- ciples of scientific pathology, in a word, in consonance with sound reason and ordinary good sense, it will, I think, not be very diflhcult to clear the ground of much that is at present doubtfid and perplexing; and therefore leaving still open a large field for professional controversy, a controversy not always assuming the most dignified character. My readers will kindly bear in mind, that this x^resent essay is based upon a paper quite recently read at one of our metropo- litan medical societies, and, therefore, it is now but little altered in sense or ]Dhraseology. The title of my pajper as recorded in the ordinary announce- ments of the proceedings of our Society, is Railway and other Accidents attended with Violence, their Effects uj)on the Nervous System.” I shall, however, on the present occasion, restrict my remarks in the following paper to railway accidents, in their effects on the nervous system, for as I proceeded to direct my thoughts and attention to the subject merely of railway col- lisions, I found the field of inquiry so gradually, and at the same time so largely to develope itself, that the subject of accidents in the more general or more comprehensive sense, become really too much for me, in fact, quite unmanageable, so far indeed, as to bring it within the compass of a reasonably short communica- tion at one of our ordinary meetings. My attention was mainly, I do not say altogether directed to this subject, during some of my researches and observations on the origin, nature, and con-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22342357_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
