Hysteria : the hysterical constitution or temperament : with suggestions as to its pathology and treatment / by William Camps.

  • Camps, William.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hysteria : the hysterical constitution or temperament : with suggestions as to its pathology and treatment / 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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    close attention ; and, therefore, I offer no apology for advert- ing to them at this time. From the lower part of the renal plexus of nerves there pass off certain nervous filaments, which, uniting with others from the mesenteric plexus, form or constitute the plexus of nerves, occasionally attended with a nervous ganglion, from which ganglion, when present, and plexus, arise the special nerves which, in their course of distri- bution, accompany the spermatic blood-vessels proceeding to the testicles in the male, and to the ovaries in the female, and to the external parts of generation. To this nervous plexus thus constituted, anatomists have given the name spermatic plexus, and it is the spermatic plexus chiefly, together with another plexus named the hypogastric plexus, that, in my judgment, plays so important a part in the morbid phenomena observable in cases of hysteria. At the proper time I shall produce evidence in favour of this statement; that it is to the spermatic nervous plexus sxo. must look, rather than to the uterus, for satisfactory explanation of the morbid phenomena of this disease; in fact, certain of the phenomena or symptoms ob- served in some cases of hysteria could not possibly be accounted for, on the supposition that they were altogether, or even in any way, due to derangements in the uterus, as, for in- stance, what shall we say in regard to cases of hysteria occurring in the male sex, as I maintain they do occasionally; for in these cases, no one will be absurd enough to impute such, whenever they occur, to derangements in an organ never present, but always absent in that sex. I entertain but little, if any, doubt that these two nervous plexuses, with their nervous ganglia, the spermatic and hypo- gastric plexus, constitute the chief efficient factors or producers of that assemblage of symptoms constituting the disease now referred to. Let it be well borne in mind that the nervous energy, agency, or power supplied by them is distributed to all the parts or organs contained within the pelvis in the two sexes, both male and female ; as also to the lower intestines, the rectum, to the various parts of the bladder, to the uterus, to the broad ligament, and to the Fallopian tube, with its fimbriated extremity, in the female. Anatomy further teaches us that these nervous plexuses and ganglia contain but few nervous filaments derived from the cerebro-spinal axis, but that they are constituted almost entirely of derivations from the trunk of the great sympathetic or internal intercostal nerve. I have repeatedly, when, on various occasions, reading papers on nervous diseases before the medical societies of the
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