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.

    19/174 (page 7)
    brain arises from suppression of perspiration, scantiness of urine, deficiency of bile or some other secretion. Another cause may aid in keeping up or increasing the pressure upon the brain in feverish disorders, viz.: an absolute expansion or increase of the volume of the blood; the most marked instance of this is in congestion of the brain from expo- sure to the heat of the sun, even though the head has not been unprotected from, its rays. Of this West saw a striking in- stance in the case of a delicate boy, who when a year old, was taken out by his nurse, during one of the hottest days of sum- mer. He was quite well and cheerful when he left the house, but, after being out for some time, began to breathe hurriedly and irregularly, and his nurse in consequence brought him home. He was restless, fretful and alarmed; his surface generally hot, and his head especially so, the brain pulsating forcibly through the anterior fontanelles ; the pulse too rapid to be counted; the respiration hurried, labored and irregular, and there were constant startings of the tendons of the extremi- ties. The child was on the eve of convulsions, but the tepid bath relieved the heat of the skin, and the expansion of the blood, the pulse fell and the twitchings diminished. Light and sound were excluded ; he fell asleep and awoke in a few hours refreshed and tranquillized, and on the next morning a little languor was all that remained of an illness which seemed likely to prove so formidable.—West. Cooling and soothing reme- dies are required in almost all cases of irritation, congestion, or expansion of the blood. Disorders of the nervous system are very frequent during the period of teething. Many of the symptoms which then occur, are the direct result of irritation of the tri-facial nerve, but others are the immediate consequence of congestion of the brain. Febrile disturbance almost always attends upon the process of dentition, and when the circulation is in a state of preternatural excitement, a very slight cause may suffice to overturn its equi- librium, and occasion a greater flow of blood to the brain than the organ is able to bear. Suppression of perspiration, defi- ciency of bile and scantiness of urine, often occur during denti- tion and leave the blood overloaded with effete and irritating substances.