A treatise on headache and neuralgia : including spinal irritation and a disquisition on normal and morbid sleep / by J. Leonard Corning ; with an appendix Eye strain: a cause of headache, by David Webster.

  • Corning, J. Leonard (James Leonard), 1855-1923.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on headache and neuralgia : including spinal irritation and a disquisition on normal and morbid sleep / by J. Leonard Corning ; with an appendix Eye strain: a cause of headache, by David Webster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    NERVOUS OR CEREBRAL HEADACHE. Under this designation I propose to consider that variety of headache which, in its typical form, is char- acterized by the absence of all circulatory derange^ nients and neuralgic symptoms. The most logical supposition relative to the pathology of this form of headache is that which ascribes the painful phenomena to certain subtle morbid changes originating in the substance of the nervous centres themselves. To be sure, we have no further proof of the truth of this hy- pothesis than that afforded by the fact, that this variety of headache may be readily evoked by pro- found emotional disturbances — factors which appeal du'ectly to the psychical centres—in the absence of all purely physical causes, such as neuralgia or derange- ments of the intra-cranial circulation. Neither this nor any other theory relative to the nature of the affec- tion can, however, be accepted as in any sense final. Unlike the anaemic and hypersemic varieties of head- ache, the form of the affection which we are consider- ing is not readily amenable to experimental inves- tigation, and hence, as already intimated, we are reduced to the necessity of forming our conclusions from data which, to say the least, are insufficient. Pending more exact knowledge, however, the theory which ascribes the phenomena of the affection to some subtle disturbance in the cerebral substance may be accepted; and it may also be added that this hypo-