Lectures on the nervous system and its diseases / by Marshall Hall.

  • Hall, Marshall, 1790-1857.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the nervous system and its diseases / by Marshall Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    255. It will be readily admitted that these points consti- tute fresh subjects for inquiry and investigation. My present object is, however, different; for I propose to devote this lecture to the consideration of the cases of convulsion from causes acting in the course of the excitor nerves, and, conse- quently, in parts eccentric from the brain and spinal marrow. 256. These causes are principally—■ 1. Dental Irritation acting through {he fifth, 2. Gastric Irritation acting through the pneumo- gastric, and 3. Intestinal Irritation acting through spinal, nerves. 257. Besides these especial causes, there are others, which act upon the nervous centres: passion, or vexation, and certain odours arc of this class ; and, singular as it may ap- pear, the state of sleep predisposes, at least, to attacks of convulsion. 258. It is interesting to observe how the various sym- ptoms in the convulsions of infants are affections of the ex- cito-motory functions: 259. Amongst the most frequent of the symptoms is strabismus ; in a second case we may have contraction of the thumb and fingers, of the wrists, and of the toes and feet; next comes that affection of the larynx and of the muscles of inspiration, which has been so well described by the late Dr. John Clarke as a peculiar species of convulsion ; in other cases the larynx is actually closed, and there are violent con- vulsive expiratory efforts; in a fifth case there is an affection of the sphincters of the bladder and intestine, even leading to the idea of calculus. Compare § 38, &c. 260. One or more of these symptoms, or a sardonic smile, leads to a general convulsion. 261. Strabismus is the first of the symptoms which I have enumerated. Like the rest, it is sometimes acute, sometimes chronic in its character. The eye is turned in- i