Essays on the theory of convulsive diseases / by Marshall Hall.

  • Hall, Marshall, 1790-1857.
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on the theory of convulsive diseases / by Marshall Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/74 (page 9)
    These views, well and profoundly impressed on the mind of the physician, are to the Diseases of the Nervous System, what the Stethoscope is to the diseases of the heart and lungs—their great Diagnostic ;—a new intellectual sense, as it were, enabling us to distinguish between diseases of cere¬ bral, spinal and ganglionic origin. Of the Spinal System, the medulla oblongata is the most vitally important portion, presiding, as the key-stone of a Reflex Arc, over the movements of the larynx and of respi¬ ration. Now the Class of convulsive diseases may be divided into those in which the larynx—(or pharynx)— is affected, and into those in which this important organ escapes; into those therefore in which The Medulla Oblongata, and into those in which The Medidla Spinalis, is principally affected—a distinction at once novel and of the very deepest interest. All this is depicted—placed before the eye itself—in the admirable plates which, thanks to Mr. Simpson, of Stamford, accompany my New Memoir, published in 1844; and it con¬ stitutes the first and only example of what I may term living pathology so pourtrayed. In that Memoir will be found the preliminary knowledge required for the prosecution of the momentous inquiry, of which the following pages present the reader with one or two unfinished specimens. The other work requisite to the inquirer into the diseases of the nervous system, is the “ Recherches sur le Systeme Nerveux,” of M. Flourens. This work must be known by any one who would prepare himself for the investigation into the nature and treatment of the diseases in question. Every word of this work deserves to be printed in characters of gold-