Nervous exhaustion and the diseases induced by it : with observations on the origin and nature of nervous force.

  • Campbell, Hugh Joseph, 1898-
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nervous exhaustion and the diseases induced by it : with observations on the origin and nature of nervous force. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    not on peculiar or specific properties of their own, but on the properties and functions of the organs into which they are distributed and the parts of the nervous centres from which they spring. Not taking into account the nerve fibres of the brain itself, whose functions are totally different from those of other parts of the nervous system, this eminent physiologist has ascertained eleven distinct kinds of nerve fibres in the spinal cord and in the cranial, spinal, and sympathetic nerves, and this without reckoning the four distinct nerve fibres of the higher senses—hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling. Moreover, he has been able to trace these eleven different kinds of nerve fibres into the spinal cord, where they still retain their distinctive characters, and form groups or columns of conductors; and he affirms that the number of functionally distinct nerve fibres is probably much greater, although not yet sufficiently demonstrable to be assumed as an ascertained fact.* Now almost all the symptoms of functional and even of organic changes which produce nervous affections take place through one or other of three modes of alteration of the properties and functions of these fifteen sets of nerves or conductors of nerve force. These three modes are— 1. Diminution or loss of power. 2. Increase of power. 3. A perverted or morbid state, producing a great variety of phenomena. * Vide Functional Nervous Affections, by C. E. Brown- Sequard, M.D., F.R.S., Ac, Part I.