Epilepsy and other affections of the nervous system which are marked by tremor, convulsion, or spasm : their pathology and treatment / by Charles Bland Radcliffe.

  • Radcliffe, Charles Bland, 1822-1889.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epilepsy and other affections of the nervous system which are marked by tremor, convulsion, or spasm : their pathology and treatment / by Charles Bland Radcliffe. 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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    On instituting a further comparison between voluntary and involuntary muscles it is found that the power of contraction, as measured by its duration, is related in a similar inverse proportion to the supply of blood. Mr. Bowman has shown that the number of capillary vessels in a muscle corresponds very closely to the number of elementary fibres; and hence involuntary muscles, whose fibres are much fewer and coarser than the fibres of volun- tary muscles, and whose disposition and power to contract is far greater, but whose individual capillaries are smaller rather than larger, have a much scantier supply of blood. Reptiles, and other animalswhose muscles are distinguished by their continued contractions, have pale and compara- tively bloodless muscles. Hybernating warm-blooded animals, whose muscles acquire j'or the time a reptilian continuousness of contractibility, have a circulation, the activity of which is barely consistent with life. It is to be remembered, also, that muscular contraction becomes excessive, and takes upon itself the form of convulsion, as an animal bleeds to death at the shambles; and that rigor mortis may be relaxed,—as in the experiments of M. Brown-Sequard, by the injection of warm blood into the vessels. All these facts apparently show that contrac- tion is due to the absence rather than to the presence of the stimulus which is derived from the blood. So far, then, there is no reason for supposing that muscular contraction is the result of vital stimulation, and there is some reason to the contrary. 2. The physical agencies which have the power of inducing muscular contraction are irritation by simple