A treatise on neuralgic diseases : dependent upon irritation of the spinal marrow and ganglia of the sympathetic nerve / by Thomas Pridgin Teale.

  • Teale, Thomas Pridgin, 1801?-1868.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on neuralgic diseases : dependent upon irritation of the spinal marrow and ganglia of the sympathetic nerve / by Thomas Pridgin Teale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    phenomena in the immediate seat of disease, as in those more remote parts to which the nerves arising from the diseased portion are distributed. In the more severe forms of disease, this principle is readily admitted and recognized. When for instance, one half of the body shall have lost its sensibility, and thfl corresponding muscles their power of action, the skin and the muscles are not regarded as the seat of disease, but the brain is immediately referred to. In the slighter forms of dis- ease of the brain and spinal marrow, such as do not completely obliterate, but merely impair or pervert the functions of the nerves—such as do not paralyze the sentient and muscular powers of the part, but produce weakness, tremors, spasms, &c. in the muscular system, and numbness, prickings, pains, and other morbid feel- ings in the nerves of sensation, this important principle, which as strictly obtains as in the former instance, is too often entirely overlooked: and a numerous class of com- plaints of very frequent occurrence, are regarded as nervous or spasmodic diseases of the part affected, in- stead of being considered as actual diseases of that por- tion of the brain or spinal marrow from which the nerves of the part are derived. The same pathologic.il principle is, I believe, equally applicable to the sympathetic system of nerves; and al- though it may be difficult to establish this opinion by ac- tual experiment, yet I think it may be rested upon a well-grounded analogy, which will justify us in regard- ing the nervous masses of the ganglionic system as bear- ing the same relation to the nerves derived from them, as the large nervous masses of the cerebro-spinal system bear to their respective nerves. Hence, many nervous affections of the viscera ought not to be considered as diseases of the vis e;a themselves, bui as symj to.natic