Railway accidents or collisions : their effects upon the nervous system : the substance of a paper read before the Harveian Medical Society / by William Camps.

  • Camps, William.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Railway accidents or collisions : their effects upon the nervous system : the substance of a paper read before the Harveian Medical Society / by William Camps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    serious cases of injury from railway collisions that came under my notice, as becoming public property in consequence of actions at law, attended with the penality of heavy damages, I could not but notice, that, the chief symptoms presented by these unfortunate sufferers were described in the medical evidence on both sides, that is on the sides of plaintiff and defendant as symptoms for the most part of an hysterical or of an epileptic character; I say for the most part, because these, and less frequent symptoms, could not fail as well also, to be recognized by the medical authorities engaged on both sides in disj)ute. Indeed, it may be said, that in most of these disputed cases as at present observed, by far the more prominent symptoms are those recognized and admitted by the medical gentlemen en- gaged, as assignable to well known lesions of the brain, spinal cord, and their membranes with the nerves connected therewith, or with other nerves or nervous ganglia distributed throughout the body. I am of opinion that a carefully collected, and well- arranged record of these cases of injuries from railway accidents or collisions, and more especially, if they can possibly be followed out, or kept under medical observation for some reasonable length of time, after the receipt of the injury, cannot fail to become a depositary of much valuable pathological information ; and so, amongst other results, may serve to elucidate not a few of the very important phenomena that we now know to denote a morbid condition of these several parts or organs, just now enu- merated; which when taken collectively, are expressed by the wide and general term, nervous system. One might almost say that there is nothing connected with them that either does not, or may not interest every one of us, yes, nearly every member of the com- munity ; for there is no one of us who has not either money to lose, or nerves to shake and to shatter, or bones to dislocate, or to break. There is no one, whom some fearful accident on a line, whether occiuing in the full light of day, or worse still, in a