Various forms of hysterical or functional paralysis / by H. Charlton Bastian.
- Henry Charlton Bastian
- Date:
- 1893
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Various forms of hysterical or functional paralysis / by H. Charlton Bastian. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
204/220 page 188
![I have always considered that in the: conjoint sensory revivals, or ^' ideas of movement, the visual or the auditory impression, as the •case may be, is the first to be revived, and that the renewed activity in one or other of these centres is passed on through associating fibres to functionally related portions of the kinsesthetic centres. The activity of these latter centres seems to me to be almost if not always evoked in this secondary manner, although for the actual production of the suitable movements the functioning of the kin- sesthetic centres is all important. They are situated in the cortex at what has been termed the bend of the stream—they are, indeed, the last portions of the cortex to be aroused in the perform- ance of voluntary movements, and from them actually issue the fibres (viz., those of the pyramidal tract) which convey the appro- priate incitations to the real motor centres situated in the bulb and in the spinal cord.^ Here, then, as elsewhere, motor centres produce (through the intermediation of nerves and muscles) move- ments which are qualified as to nature, range, and force by the precise nature of the stimuli which they receive from sensoiy centres.- How all-important these sensory activities are for the pioduction of voluntary movements is well shown in many cases of brain disease leading to speech defects. Thus, I have had under observa- tion from time to time since 1878 a man who then became paralysed on the right side, and whose powers of expression by .speech and writing were at the same time disordered in a remark- ' I purposely, for the sake of simplifying the problems under discussion, omit all reference here to the co-operative action of the cerebellum in the actual production of movements. - I am sorry that Dr. Ferrier has again not taken the trouble to state my views correctly. In his most recently published work he quite misrepresents them by stating that I have taught that the kinsesthetic centres are aroused as •' independent centres of activity, irrespective of the stimuli from the sensory centres of the cortex (^Cerebral Localisation, 1890, p. 147). This supposed view of mine he then proceeds to refute by quoting the experiments of Marique, confirmed by Exner and Paneth, to the effect that when the motor [kin- esthetic] centres have been completely isolated, by section of the fibres which associate them with the sensory centres of the cortex, paralysis results of precisely the same character as that which occurs when they are completely extirpated. Marique proved that the same contractions were obtainable on electrical irritation of the respective centres after, as before, isolation, showing that they still retained their excitability and connection with the pyramidal tracts. So far from being opposed to my views, it will be seen that these ..experimental results are in exact accordance with what I have always said in regard to the mode in which the activity of the kinassthetic centres is evoked. See, for instance. The Brain as an Organ of Mind, 1880, p. 593, and elsewhere ; also Brain, Ap. 1887, pp. 7, 57, and elsewhere.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21040229_0204.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
