Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    438/896 (page 186)
    there are other eifects which are to be regarded as secondary consequences of the depressing action of the cold on the general system, particularly the nervous system, and which are shown in lowered vitality and subsequent inflammatory action in some part or organ. Let me explain. The nutrition of every portion of the body, to the most minute tissue, is under the direct influence and control of the nervous system, as is proved by the fact that anything which interrupts or interferes with the communication between a part and its nervous connections, will affect the health or soundness of that part. I cannot at present stop to inquire how this nervous influence is exercised, but you may just bear the fact in mind. The nervous system, which, as you know, embraces the brain, spinal cord, sympathetic, &c, and the numberless branches of nerves which ramify everywhere throughout the body, and in no place more abundantly than in the skin, is so arranged that an impression made at one point, and conveyed from thence to the spinal cord or brain, may there excite either the same or else a new set of impressions or actions, which may be conducted to another and far distant point. It is in some respects like the very useful system now in operation of what is called the telephonic exchange/ A number of individuals have tele- phonic wires leading from their houses or places of business to a common central office. If then A, living in the west end, wishes to communicate with B, living in Leith, he cannot do so directly, but he sends a message to the central office to say, put me in communication with B, whereupon his wire is switched on to connection with B's wire, and the two can then converse with each other. Now to apply this to the subject in hand, an im- pression of a depressing kind is made upon some part of the surface of the body, say the feet, the chest, or neck, by cold or damp. It is conveyed to the brain, which sends it off again, not neces- sarily to the part or organ from whence it came, but to some other one altogether. The message the brain sends is that for the time the healthy nutrition of the part is to be altered or dis- turbed, and, as a consequence, some mischief, generally in the form of an inflammation, more or less severe, must result. This, I take it, is very much what happens when we catch a cold.