Clinical lectures on diseases of the nervous system : delivered at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, London / by W.R. Gowers.

  • Gowers, W. R. (William Richard), 1845-1915.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on diseases of the nervous system : delivered at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, London / by W.R. Gowers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    proportion of cases of disease of the nervous system, to render it useless, or more than useless in the case of a large number of the nutritional affections that are called func- tional, and of the structural maladies that are called degenerative, as well as many of the maladies that depend on the visible and conspicuous changes that are called organic. The student has to acquire his knowledge of all diseases by the method of types, and the same method is em- ployed in the practical diagnosis of most other maladies. Indeed, in the case of many, no other system of recognis- ing the nature of a case could be employed than that of observing the correspondence of the symptoms, in charac- ter and course, with those of a certain form which is known by a special name. But when we turn to the diseases of the nervous system that I have indicated, we meet with a series of maladies the variety of which is almost infinite. When we.consider the various structures comprised in the nervous system, their diversity of function, the extremely numerous combinations of structure and function that may be deranged at the same time, all mutually acting and re- acting to produce the manifestation of disorder; when we consider further the variety of nutritional and degenerative processes to which these structures are liable, and also the degree and extent to which they are influenced by toxic blood states—agencies that we are only beginning to per- ceive in their nature and diversity,—we can readily under- stand that it not only may be, but that it must be, true that the diseases we meet with are so numerous and so diverse as entirely to baffle an attempt to range them under definite types, that can be designated by definite names. But in the series they form, there are here and there aggre- gations, as it were, in which the morbid process corre- sponds, at least in its chief features, varying only in minor points. These we treat as types, and call by names, and