The nerves : their influence and importance in health and disease, a contribution to popular physiology / by Sir George Lefevre.

  • Lefevre, George, Sir, 1798-1846.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nerves : their influence and importance in health and disease, a contribution to popular physiology / by Sir George Lefevre. 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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    toothache by fear, in the wooden-legged man jumping over the gate, or the gouty man quitting his bed. In all we must admit a moral influence which, for a time, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, predominates over and controls the physical powers. This influence is, perhaps, always voluntary ; for, as regards muscular motion, it must be borne in mind that the voluntary muscles act independently of the manifestation of the will. Sleep-walking cannot be instanced in proof of this, for it is by no means clear that the will is not active in this state. Dr Whytt observes that many of the bodily motions are performed when we are insensible of the power of the will excited in their production. We are not aware that the eye-lids are kept open by the will; but when drowsiness and sleep steal upon us, we find it requires a considerable effort to prevent the falling down of the upper curtain. In a physiological sense, all these apparently won- derful phenomena are true, but they are by no means new. Of the rest of mesmerism, as far as the opera- tions of the mind are concerned and its knowledge of things, these are new; it will require undeniable evidence to prove them true. If they be, they rank with miracles, and are without the pale of physiology. See Appendix. SLEEP. In the few observations to be made upon a subject which has given rise to so much speculation, it will be evident, whether sleep be considered as a function