Essays on the theory of convulsive diseases / by Marshall Hall.

  • Hall, Marshall, 1790-1857.
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on the theory of convulsive diseases / by Marshall Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/74
    INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Within the cranium and the spinal canal there exists a most important part of the nervous system, called, from its locality, cerebro-spinal. It is an important question in phy¬ siology—Of what does this organ consist ? As the chemist takes up a mineral, familiar to him in its external appearance and general composition, and, subjecting it to a new and rigid analysis, discovers new elements pre¬ viously unsuspected, so I have been led to treat the cerebro¬ spinal axis, as it has been termed, and I have detected in it a new element of vast extent and importance. This axis was formerly supposed to consist of the cere¬ brum and cerebellum with the intra-spinal chord of cerebral nerves, of the intra-spinal connexions of the ganglionic sys¬ tem, and, according to Sir Charles Bell, of a respiratory tract. Beyond these, I believe, nothing was known, nothing even suspected. There is, however, another element, the spinal centre of a system of incident and reflex nerves, the seat of a peculiar power, physical in its nature, excito-motor in its mode, and reflex in its form, 'of action; the nervous organ of all the acts of ingestion and of egestion in the animal ceconomy, and therefore of all the acts which tend to the preservation of the individual and the perpetuation of the race, and of none more than of the vital function of respiration. This system, which I propose to designate the spinal system, in contradistinction to the cerebral and the ganglionic, is also the seat of the Class of convulsive diseases, and the seat of action of a Class of remedial agents. One would think there is sufficient in such a discovery as this to ensure the candour, if not the favour and gratitude,