Diseases of the nervous system : a text-book of neurology and psychiatry / by Smith Ely Jellife and William A. White.

  • Jelliffe, Smith Ely, 1866-1945.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the nervous system : a text-book of neurology and psychiatry / by Smith Ely Jellife and William A. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/1160
    The diseases of the nervous system are no longer compassed by a description of the gross lesions of the brain, spinal cord, cranial and peripheral nerves. The more limited symptomatology of disorders of these structures, which in this work has been called sensori-motor neurology, has been expanded in two directions—in one by the increase in our knowledge of the historically oldest portion of the nervous system, namely, the sympathetic and autonomic (vegetative) nervous system and in the other by the increase in our knowledge of the mechanisms that operate at the psychic or mental levels. The vegetative nervous system is in close functional relations with the endocrinous glands, and, although some of the endocrinopathies may ultimately turn out not to be exclusively nervous affections, still these organs of internal secretion are so closely related from all points of view, embryological, anatomical, physiological, pathological, and pharmacodynamic, with the vegetative nervous system that their dis¬ ordered functions must needs be considered in a work dealing with the diseases of the nervous system. The symptomatology of this region constitutes the borderland of neurology and internal medicine. At the highest level stand the mental mechanisms in which action receives a symbolic representation. Here the nervous system is also the medium through wThich that form of physiological or pathological activity called conduct is brought about. These mechanisms, while operating consciously, largely through the sensori-motor channels of adjustment, are also intimately related to the vegetative levels where through the emotions they act unconsciously. The authors have kept in mind the concept of the individual as a biological unit tending by development and conduct toward certain broadly defined goals and have considered the nervous system as only a part of that larger whole. The part, however, partakes of the unity of the whole and, so far as possible, the attempt has been made to arrange the diseases of the nervous system in accord with this evolutionary concept. For practical purposes and for the reasons stated the work has