An essay on headachs [sic] and on their cure / [Walter Vaughan].

  • Vaughan, Walter
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on headachs [sic] and on their cure / [Walter Vaughan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    243/276 (page 225)
    which is peculiar in any part of an individual, is more easily disturbed than a circulation which is common to that part in the species. I suppose my reader to know how solutions of continuity, as we say, are repaired in different structures ; how new and adventitious parts differ from original parts, and from themselves, when growing, and when their growth is finished, &c. Whenever then that circulation within the head, which is the Cause of the Predisposition to Cephalalgia, is somewhat permanently disor- dered, I suppose Cephalalgia arises. Cephalalgia cannot arise from the mere Pre- disposition to it. There must be an occasion acceding: and this occasion must be an unusual one, for Cephalalgia arises neither on common occasions; nor, indeed, always on unusual ones ; because the arteries have a power of accommo- dating themselves to the column of blood they contain. It is not improbable, I think, that the occa- sions of Cephalalgia are all such as act by pro- ducing a debility and dilatation of some of those blood-vessels within the cranium, in which the Predisposition to Cephalalgia consists. It is not difficult to suppose, that blood-vessels, having a peculiar course to their destination, if suddenly debilitated, are by consequence enlarged more than the extent of their elastic power allows. John Hunter supposes a dilatation of the blood-vessels to exist in inflammation: but the dilatation of the blood-vessels in’ inflammation is preceded by a dilatation of the capillaries; Q $e