Essays on hysteria, brain-tumor, and some other cases of nervous disease.

  • Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 1842-1906.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on hysteria, brain-tumor, and some other cases of nervous disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    is it probable that the irritation expends itself exclu- sively upon the sensory centres of the cortex, but is rather distributed throughout all the receiving stations of the cerebro-spinal axis. Now, when under the in- fluence of a normal stimulus, the cortical centres have acquired the habit of registering impressions abnor- mally and excessively, as is shown by the patient feel- ing pain entirely out of proportion to the magnitude of the irritations, we must believe that the work of chemical synthesis excited in the sensory centres, is also excessive. It should, or at least may follow, that the waves of molecular movement transmitting im- pression in an intracerebral direction become retarded, and thus interfere with waves coming from other cortical areas. Then, though to a less degree than with violent pain of peripheric origin, the play of in- tracerebal associations and impulses, and their ultimate convergence upon motor (volitional) acts, will be interfered with. Hysterical paralysis of volition should be the necessary correlative of hysterical hyperesthesia. Many facts indicate that the inhibition of one nerve- centre by another is powerful in proportion as the stor- age of force in the first exceeds that of the second. The feeble control of the vagus centre over the heart in rabbits, the feeble control of the cortex over the subcortical motor (convulsive) centres in young chil- dren, negatively illustrates this law. In accordance with this, the inhibition of the non- sensory cortical areas will be easy, in proportion to an habitual deficiency in the storage power inherent in their tissues. And since the active function of these areas in motility, volition, and thought, has been shown to furnish an important though indirect part of