On the neck as a medical region, and on trachelismus : on hidden seizures; on paroxysmal apoplexy, paralysis, mania, syncope, &c. / by Marshall Hall.

  • Hall, Marshall, 1790-1857.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the neck as a medical region, and on trachelismus : on hidden seizures; on paroxysmal apoplexy, paralysis, mania, syncope, &c. / by Marshall Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    Phis form of seizure I purposely avoid the term epilepsy —arises from the same causes as the others to which I have adverted. Phey belong to a Class of affections, which, how- evei various and varied in other respects, combine the sym- ptoms of faintness or sickishness. A fall, or blow on the head \ an apoplectic seizure ; hydrencephalus; loss of blood; disgust, fear, and other forms of emotion, and sea-sickness, are of this kind. A fall or blow on the head may be regarded as likely to be more or less serious in its ulterior effects, according as it is or is not followed by pallor and sickness. The apoplectic seizure is frequently marked by pallor and vomiting; a frequent, sometimes the only, symptom of incipient hydrencephalus, is vomiting. Every one knows the effect of certain emotions in blanching the cheeks, and inducing nausea ; the effects of loss of blood and of posture during bloodletting or haemorrhage; the phenomena of sea-sickness : in all these cases it is probable that the medulla oblongata is the precise part of the nervous centres specially affected. It is on this part that the blow, or contre-coup in the case of accident, that certain emotions, that the diminished pressure of the column of spinal blood in bloodletting in the erect position, and that the varied pressure of that column on the sea, have their chief influence. I have suggested the anatomy of the veins and muscles of the neck as an important subject of inquiry to the physician. I would now suggest a careful examination of the veins within the spinal canal and cranium, as presenting another topic in medical anatomy of great interest. Again, I would express my hope, that medicine, like surgery, will one day be based on the sciences of anatomy and physiology, to the exclusion of ignorance and empiricism altogether. It was written on the portal of the school of Plato : OSei? ayea/Aeeiorri). Is it too much to ask of the legislature to enact that no one ignorant of anatomy and physiology shall prescribe or administer medi- cine, and to cause the words Ov8et< A<l>T2l0A0r02 e/ovT» to be in- scribed over our medical colleges ? Anatomy, physiology, diagnosis, pathology (that is, living pathology), therapeutics, (or the modus operandi of medicine),—such are the steps to be taken by the scientific physician in his visits to his patients. In the absence of any part of this knowledge, he may descend