Studies on Functional Nervous Disorders (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.1870 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XLIX. SECRETION FLUXES. It has been already seen that increase of secretions is one of the results of vaso-motor nerve paralysis. The glands thus circumstanced receive more than their normal supply of blood, and secrete accordingly. Division of the sympathetic on one side of a horse's neck causes that side of the face and head to be bathed in sweat. Verneuil relates a case of neuroma of the prepuce, where the patient bounded back as if electrified when the part was gently stroked, while his face became red and covered with sweat. (' Archiv. Gener. 1861, II, p. 537. Anstie mentions the case of a boy who suffered from Epileptiform attacks, with some permanent weakness of the whole of the left side, and occasional hypenemia, heat, and sweating of the left side of the face. The symptoms were materially aggravated by constipation. Muscular exertion produces very much the same effect, and no doubt in the same way, viz., by exhausting nervous power. Diaphoretic drugs may very reasonably be regarded as toxic agents operating especially on the vaso-motor nerves of the sweat glands. Here, then, we have a secretion flux produced by the several causes which we have so repeatedly noticed in various neuroses, viz., direct loss of nerve power, inhibitory prostration, and toxaemia; and it cannot well be doubted that the same causes will act in the same way on other glandular organs. Nerve exhaustion seems to have a special tendency to mark its presence by exaggeration of perspiration. Phthisis, rickets, simple debility, all present this symptom very strikingly; and its especial occurrence during sleep, when the nervous organs are to a great extent at rest, indicates strongly its dependence on the cessation of their controlling power. The salivary glands are occasio...