A treatise on the inflammatory and organic diseases of the brain : including irritation, congestion and inflammation of the brain, and its membranes, tuberculous-meningitis, hydrocephaloid disease, hydrocephalus, atrophy and hypertrophy, hydatids, and cancer of the brain. Based upon Th. J. Rueckert's Clinical experience in homoeopathy.

  • Peters, John C. (John Charles), 1819-1893.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the inflammatory and organic diseases of the brain : including irritation, congestion and inflammation of the brain, and its membranes, tuberculous-meningitis, hydrocephaloid disease, hydrocephalus, atrophy and hypertrophy, hydatids, and cancer of the brain. Based upon Th. J. Rueckert's Clinical experience in homoeopathy. 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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    Some children seem to be much more prone than others to this affection, and it is in the nervous, weakly and scrofulous that it is most frequently seen. There is apparently an origi- nal difference or excitability of the nervous constitution, which predisposes them to be thrown into this state of Erethism; and when this natural predisposition is not present, defective nour- ishment, and a debilitated state of the system are apt to induce it. Any long continued irritation of the nervous extremities, particularly of those distributed upon the mucous membranes, may be the exciting cause of this affection; hence, painful den- tition, worms, an unhealthy state of the stomach, bowels or liver, or chronic and troublesome eruptions, or sores, or some disease or impurity of the blood, may prove the exciting cause of irritation of the brain or nervous system. When this state obtains, convulsions, it is well known, are apt to occur. The most deceptive part of the disease is, that the preter- natural excitement and mobility of the nervous system is apt to give rise to excitement of the heart and arteries, and determi- nation of blood to the head, from the excited condition of the brain. If the case be regarded as one of active congestion or commencing inflammation of the brain, and treated allopathical- ly and antiphlogistically, irrespective of the peculiar state of the nervous system, exhaustion will speedily follow, and the symptoms of reaction and excitement from loss of blood will be added; if the same treatment be still pursued, the case will soon end fatally, and probably be attended with effusion of water into the ventricles of the brain. If the body be examined after death, the effusion will of course be detected, and will be presumed to have been the cause of death ; but the real truth is in certain states of the nervous system, unprececled by any great cause of exhaustion, an increased quantity of blood may be thrown to the brain, and give rise to all the symptoms of the first stage of an inflammatory affection, but which cannot be removed by the ordinary allopathic antiphlogistic means, as these will aggravate the original excited condition of the brain and nervous system, inducing new and still more dangerous symptoms, causing the case to terminate fatally, with all the signs of an advanced stage of dropsy of the brain. In older patients these cases are apt to be attended with