A treatise on the more obscure affections of the brain : on which the nature and successful treatment of many chronic diseases depend ; being the Gulstonian lectures, delivered at the College of Physicians, in May 1835 / by A.P.W. Philip.

Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the more obscure affections of the brain : on which the nature and successful treatment of many chronic diseases depend ; being the Gulstonian lectures, delivered at the College of Physicians, in May 1835 / by A.P.W. Philip. 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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    In these papers I have had occasion to refer to the sets of experiments, made with a view to draw the line of distinction between the sensorial and nervous functions, and determine the relation these func- tions bear to each other; from which it appears that the nervous bears the same relation to the sensorial, that the muscular bears to the nervous system. The power of the muscular, it appears from the facts there adduced, is independent of the nervous system, but always in some of its functions, and in all its functions occasionally, under its influence. In like manner it was found that the power of the nervous is independent of the sen- sorial system, all the nervous functions remaining after the final removal of the sensorial power; but that in some of these functions always, and in all of them occasionally, the nervous system is under the influence of that power. Thus it appears that there is, in the more per- fect animals, two sets of functions in a great degree distinct—those depending on the nervous and muscular systems alone, and those in which the sensorial system is included : the former consti- tuting the vital functions, those by which we are maintained, the latter the sensitive functions, those by which we are connected with the world which surrounds us; and that both sets of functions are under the immediate influence of the active, that is, the central parts of the nervous system.