A case of intra-cranial injury with extensive destruction of brain substance about the rolandic area and loss of the so-called muscular sense / under care of J. Cooke ; report with observations and comments by G.L. Laycock.

  • Cooke, J.
Date:
[1893]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A case of intra-cranial injury with extensive destruction of brain substance about the rolandic area and loss of the so-called muscular sense / under care of J. Cooke ; report with observations and comments by G.L. Laycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    20/20 (page 8)
    muscular force has to commence action, and of the successive changes of position or relations which the movement causes. These estimations of position are always present in the normal body, as anyone can ascertain for himself, and it leads me to the belief that they are not of the nature of ordinary sensory impressions such as pain or heat and cold, but that there must be some arrangement by which a circuit of nerve force is con- tinually in equilibrium. In the cerebral part of this circuit, there will be some sort of centre like a galvanometer in an electric circuit, which will keep the cortical centres informed, so to speak, of the state of the peripheral parts, not only when they are at rest, but when they are in action, action being indicated by change from one state of equilibrium to that of another. In our case, injury to the cortical loop of such a circuit could explain many of the symptoms. As regards the sensory disturbance, here again the sense of position takes an important place. Common or cutaneous sensation, with pain or some variety of pain, has its nervous tract in the posterior end of the hindmost limb of the interna) capsule. This has escaped injury in our case evidently, for common sensation seems to be actually increased. The sense of tactile localisation is almost lost, and I think we may infer that this faculty is in a different nervous tract from common sensation. In the diagrams of the internal capsule, the anterior half of the anterior limb is left blank. From the experience gained by this case, I think it may be fairly filled up by the tracts of the so- called muscular sense, or, as I prefer to call it, the sense of local relation. 1TILLWK1.L ANU CO., PniNTKRS, 195A COLLI KS STRKET, MELBOURNE