Epilepsy : its symptoms, treatment, and relation to other chronic convulsive diseases / by J. Russell Reynolds.

  • Reynolds J. Russell (John Russell), Sir, 1828-1896.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epilepsy : its symptoms, treatment, and relation to other chronic convulsive diseases / by J. Russell Reynolds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    this; that, although some individuals are quite free from such error, many rest content with assigning the name epilepsy to the malady imder which a patient suffers ; and they thus put a stop to aU fui'ther inquiry into the case; regarding it either as hope- lessly inciu-able, or as curable only by the chance employment of some so-called specific which might suit the case. Thus, the treatment of a large group of very different diseases has been thi'own back into the empirical condition from which aU scientific practitioners have, for many years, sought to deliver the healing art. A second evil has affected both pathology and nosology. The practice of retaining one name, epilepsy—however qualified by such terms, as idiopathic, symptomatic, sympathetic, and the like—^has thrown too much importance upon the similarity of forms of disease, and too little upon their points of essential difference. It has grouped together cases presenting resem- blance in superficial or accidental features,—such as the form and order of convulsive movements,—although they have been so widely separated in important characters as are syphilitic menin- gitis, urinsemic convulsions from Bright's disease, the fits of dentition or dyspepsia, and the idiopathic malady which we tenn true, uncompKcated epilepsy. Such a method of constructing a nosology has inverted the true principle of classification; sub- stituting the more important character for the less important; and doing this in circumstances where such error is most preju- dicial to the science of pathology, and its practical application. If there are cases, and it cannot be doubted that there are, in which nothing morbid can be discovered, either in structure or function, over and above the occurrence of certain paroxysms of convulsion ; and if to these the name epilepsy is to be applied, as it has been for a long period in the history of medi- cine, then those cases which present convulsions, and other symptoms which are clearly traceable either to changes in the blood, or definite diseases of the nervous centres, or of other organs, should be denoted by some different name. The difference between them is one of essential cliaracter; and, instead of being