The human brain : its structure, physiology and diseases. With a description of the typical forms of brain in the animal kingdom / by Samuel Solly.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The human brain : its structure, physiology and diseases. With a description of the typical forms of brain in the animal kingdom / by Samuel Solly. 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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    to which the brain is subjected. In these cases the child is always deficient in intellectual power, and is frequently idiotic, and unable to walk. The head retains its natural size, but the sutures close unusually early, and the parietal and occipital protuberances are unusually prominent. Such children present none of those indications of rachi- tis which so often coincide with hypertrophy of the brain; but the lower animal life thrives at the expense of the higher ; the skin is firm and the body fat and ruddy; the muscles and bones strong, the constitution robust, and the appetite craving. It further appears, from a minute examination of the condition of the brain in these cases, that its weight is, to a great degree, dependent on the quantity of blood which it contains. In detailing the symptoms that ordinarily attend hyper- trophy of the brain, M. Mauthner distinguishes the passive from the active form of the affection. In passive hypertrophy the cranium early presents a striking deviation from its natural appearance, in the en- largement and globular prominence of the occiput. The parietal protuberances subsequently project, the coronal and sagittal sutures continue open in the ninth or even in the twelfth month, and the fontanelles remain unclosed for a much longer time than natural; the growth of hair is scanty, and the veins of the scalp are much injected. Children in this state sleep much, though they are easily startled ; they sweat much about the head; and when in a sitting posture the head drops forward by its own weight. Attacks of crowing inspiration occur when the child cries, and not unfrequently end in, or are accompanied by, regu- lar convulsions, and the severity and frequency of these seizures are greatest during the period of dentition. Digestion is at the same time impaired, and vomiting and diarrhoea are frequent. By degrees the symptoms of pressure on the brain become more evident, or they are suddenly developed, as the result of the supervention of some other disease. When hypertrophy of the brain has reached this stage, the skull deviates still more from its natural shape : the