A Further Inquiry Concerning Constitutional Irritation and the Pathology of the Nervous System (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. OF NERVOUS AFFECTIONS CONSEQUENT UPON LOCAL INJURY OR IRRITATION, AS EXAMPLES OF REFLECTED IRRITATION. MORBID AFFECTIONS OF THE SENSITIVE NERVES. HYSTERIA. NEURALGIA. MORBID AFFECTIONS OF THE MOTIVE NERVES. SPASM. TETANUS. CASES. The depravation, suspension, and even total loss of sight, hearing, smell and taste, are not unfrequently indirect results of injury or inflammation. They may ensue as the direct consequences of organic laesion, the mechanical effects occasionally witnessed of violent concussions of the brain and nerves; but it is not of these that I propose to speak in this chapter. I refer to cases in which the morbid affection is resulting from a change in the tonic condition of the organ, or of the nerve itself, in which no structural change is perceptible that can explain the defect, until after long disuse of the function the organ falls into decay. Such cases are to be considered as functional, in contradistinction to those which, bearing palpable mark of altered organization from whatever cause, we term organic. A blow on the head or back, or a fall on the breech or the feet, producing a temporary stun, which having passed away is thought of no more; extraordinary mental excitement, or a deep and lasting affliction, or suecession of troubles; an inflammation, or a slow organic disease of any part of the body, or of wasting remedies for its cure; penetrating cold from long exposure; sudden changes of temperature; a metastasis, or the sudden disappearance of cutaneous eruptions or inflammations of the surface, or of habitual discharges, but especially the imperfect or vitiated action of the secreting organs, which is more or less connected with all, --are the ordinary precursors of these functional disorders. Such as are not cons..