Visible muscular conditions as expressive of states of the brain and nerve centres / by Francis Warner.

  • Warner, Francis, 1847-1926.
Date:
[1881?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Visible muscular conditions as expressive of states of the brain and nerve centres / by Francis Warner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ■mind, and as giving the knowledge of the means whereby the iidea of his mental states and feelings may be expressed. If tthe matters discussed in this essay are of nse in this direction, (they concern not only the physician, bnt also the artist. It is the work of the painter and sculptor to express by form tthe conceptions he may conceive of the condition of men and women in certain conditions of mind, states of strength and weakness; expressions of mental and physical pain, states of rrest or repose, feminine coyness and defiance; the poet has to describe all these things in words. ■ Clearly, also, it is a mis- take for conditions of the limbs characteristic of disease to be rased in art as mere expressions of feeling, unless the feeling I be the result of disease. There is then in the subject before us, “ the visible con- i ditions of the muscles as expressive of the states of the nervous >system,” a field for observation and description in which the B;artist and the physician may work together, observing and ||; analysing with as much exactness as may be, the mode by 'which the varying conditions of the brain and mind are indi- cated to our eye, and may therefore be described by words, or I by drawing or sculpture. We must study man in all aspects oof the case, and when we see in the face, limbs, or body indica- tions of his brain or mental condition, we should analyse and 'describe—first, the position of features and parts as we see Them, then the muscles which produce these positions or move- aments, knowing that the muscular condition which has pro- ■duced the movements or positions is the result of the state of The corresponding nerve-centres. It has been said that a 1 man’s face is the index of his mind, and this is true, for all the warying changes of expression in the face (except those of colour) are due to changes in the facial muscles, and these ssolely depend upon changes in nerve-cells. The knowledge that we already possess of the nerve-centres iis from observation of the condition of the muscles. In a given case, comparing the state of the muscles during life as they imay be affected with paralysis or spasm with the brain lesion lfound after death, and by collecting and comparing many cases, it has been found that destructive or irritative lesions of certain parts of the brain cause paralysis or spasm of a certain