Cholera, a disease of the nervous system / by John Chapman ; [followed by] Reviews of Dr. Chapman's work on diarrhœa and cholelra.

  • Chapman, John.
Date:
1883
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cholera, a disease of the nervous system / by John Chapman ; [followed by] Reviews of Dr. Chapman's work on diarrhœa and cholelra. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    harmony with the results of the most recent physiological investigations; it is ingenious, clearly put, happily illustrated, logically argued, and meant to be a more comprehensive and simple explanation than has yet been given of the phenomena of choleraic disease. For these reasons we have considered it our duty to place at once before our readers a sketch of Dr. Chap- man’s work, and to give judgment on its general character. “The introduction to Dr. Chapman’s book is occupied by a sketch of his views of neuro-physiology, and as they properly constitute the root of his pathology, it is necessary to consider them. He sets out with two postulates—first, that the sym¬ pathetic is the excito-motor nerve presiding over the vascular system ; and secondly, that the functional activity of every gland is excited or maintained by a stimulus sent from the cerebro-spinal axis. The former doctrine, which derives its claims to assent from the experiments of Brown-Sequard and Claude Bernard, is now, with certain qualifications and restric¬ tions, accepted as true by nearly all physiologists. The latter, based upon the recent discoveries of Bernard, Ludwig, Pfliiger, and others, has, as Dr. Chapman thinks, been raised to the rank of a general law by his own observations. “ Bernard has proved that the parotid and submaxillary glands receive their nervous supplies, on the one hand from the cerebro-spinal system, and on the other from the sympathetic ; and he has demonstrated by experiments on various animals that when the former are in action the maximum of blood is supplied to the glands and the maximum of saliva secreted, and that when the latter are in action it is shown in modifying the %j O volume of the arteries and so regulating the supply of blood. Dr. Chapman has extended this discovery to all the other glands of the body ; but in virtue of some experiments about to be mentioned, he puts an interpretration quite different from that of Bernard upon the purpose of the cerebro-spinal gland nerves. The latter conceives that they act by producing a kind of paralysis of the sympathetic; the former that they act by stimulating the gland-cells to the active selection from the blood of the materials essential to the elaboration of their secretions. “ According to Dr. Chapman’s statements, he has discovered that the application of heat along the spine stimulates the glands of the whole cutaneous and mucous surfaces, and that conversely the application of ice restrains or depresses them ; that in the former case the secretion is increased, in the latter diminished or suppressed. Seeing, then, that secretions are arrested when the surfaces are full of blood, and abundant often when the surfaces