Clinical lectures on Neurasthenia.

  • Savill, Thomas Dixon, 1856-1910.
Date:
1899
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on Neurasthenia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    and intimately associated in several ways. Possibly, the question may be raised whetber disease of tbe nervous system is a legitimate and desirable speciality. Now, tbis criticism might perhaps be just in regard to narrower domains, where tbe justification for specialism largely, if not entirely, rests upon the fact that exceptional experience is required for the necessary technique of treatment. But in a subject so vast, so unknown as that of tbe nervous system, so intimately connected with all the other systems, specialisation surely needs but little justification. Consider for a moment the pomt which I just now referred to, the close association of the nervous and cardio-vascular systems. The latter supplies the nervous system with nutrition and oxygen, as it does the other systems, but, more than this, an association exists which does not obtain in other instances, which has most far-reaching effects. I refer to the control which the nervous system exercises over aU the organs of the body through the mediation of tbe cardio-vascular system. The importance of the sympathetic portion of the nervous system in this respect cannot be over-estimated; yet it is practically a sealed book. On account, therefore, of the vastness of the subject, its difficulty and intricacy, no less than the special opportunities afforded by this Infirmary, it is unnecessary to say more in justification of constituting the study of diseases of the nervous system a legitimate speciality. Methods of Besearch and Clinical Investigation. Let us turn for one moment to tbe various methods of research adopted in tbe investigation of the pathology of the nervous system. It is usual to mention four naethods by which neuro-pathology has at different times become advanced. First, a study of embryology and development teaches us a good deal concerning the course of the fibres and the anatomical relations of the different parts of the central nervous system. Secondly, the functions of the dififerent portions of the brain and the relation of the several columns in the spina cord to one another has often been revealed by means of