Lectures on the diagnosis and treatment of the principal forms of paralysis of the lower extremities / by C. E. Brown-Séquard.

  • Brown-Séquard, Charles-Edouard, 1817-1894.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the diagnosis and treatment of the principal forms of paralysis of the lower extremities / by C. E. Brown-Séquard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    answer to this objection is indeed very simple. The excitability of smooth fibres, as well as that of striated muscles, varies exceedingly in different parts of the body. An exciting agent (whether galvanism, cold, heat, or belladonna and ergot of rye) will produce pow- erful contraction in some places, and hardly any in other places. The smooth fibres of the uterus contract more than those of the bowels or the bladder, and less than those of certain bloodvessels when stimulated by gal- vanism ; the smooth fibres of certain bloodvessels con- tract more than those of the uterus under the excitation of cold; still more, the bloodvessels of the cerebral lobes and of the face, which contract so much when their nerve (the cervical sympathetic) is irritated, contract but very little when excited by belladonna and ergot, while these two excitants produce powerful contractions in the bloodvessels of the spinal cord. Not only have I seen the diminution in the calibre of bloodvessels of the pia mater of the spinal cord taking place in dogs after they had taken large doses of bella- donna or ergot of rye, but I have also ascertained that the reflex power of the spinal cord (most likely as a consequence of the contraction of bloodvessels) becomes very much diminished under the influence of these two remedies, which in so doing act just in the opposite way to that of strychnine. Led by the knowledge of the above facts, we have employed belladonna and ergot of rye in cases of para- plegia due to a simple congestion or a chronic inflamma- tion of the spinal cord and its meninges, and we have