Remarks on evolution and dissolution of the nervous system / by J. Hughlings Jackson.

  • Jackson, J. Hughlings (John Hughlings), 1835-1911.
Date:
[1887?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on evolution and dissolution of the nervous system / by J. Hughlings Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    toms of slight fits from cases of several patients. I wish to suggest that the proper analysis of this complex symptoma- tology is impossible unless, among other things, we distin- guish between the psychical and the physical. We have also to note degrees of positive and superpositive states of con- sciousness in these cases from the crudest to the most elaborate, and to consider the physical conditions of them. We have also to consider separately negative affections of consciousness and degrees of them. We have also to dis- tinguish between physical conditions, especially between convulsions and movements ordinarily so-called. In things so complex as epilepsy and insanity, generalizations are worth- less without prior analysis. As was shown, Section 1, the epileptic paroxysm is an exceedingly complex thing. (1) There is sometimes a “warning” of crude sensation, e.g., a stench comes into the nose. As the term sensation tells us, this is a mental state, it is superpositive. It is a very crude and excessive state, and implies the correlative physical condition of sudden, &c., discharge of many central olfactory elements at once, and is our clue to the seat of the “discharging lesion.” (2) There is the emotion of fear. (I do not mean a fear of the fit, but “fear which comes by itself.”) This is a very complex psychical state, and, I sub- mit, does not occur during sudden, &c., discharges, but arises during slight discharges of very complex nervous arrange- ments representing parts of the body, especially organic parts, concerned in the manifestations of fear.* (3) There is some- times the “ dreamy state,” so-called “ intellectual aura ; ” for example, there rises a feeling “ of being somewhere else.” This is an exceedingly complex mental state, and cannot, I submit, arise during discharges at all comparable in degree with those which produce convulsions. Consider how vastly it differs in degree of elaborateness from a crude sensation, the physical condition for which crude sensation is comparable to the sudden, &c., discharge of motor elements from which convulsion results. So far we have spoken of positive and superpositive states of consciousness, urging that there are great differences in their degrees of elaborate- ness, and alluding to their physical correlatives. There are negative states of consciousness. There is very often a stage of (4) defect of consciousness * Mv belief is that what are called the manifestations of fear are really after-effects of a discharge. Fear is anger broken down, and is antithetical to