On chorea and other allied movement disorders of early life / by Octavius Sturges.

Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On chorea and other allied movement disorders of early life / by Octavius Sturges. 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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    voluntary and deliberate, yet must it be provided that each of these shall have its proper motive. Anger excites spasm, fear tremor, mental embarrassment restlessness, and so on. A tremor with no particle of fear or dismay to justify it, a rigid spasm with no sensation of anger or suspense, a restlessness of the limbs with the mind at rest—these are conditions which require a separate explanation. The ordinary laws of emotion movement do not provide for them. Some extra and separate motive must be sought for. But while thus ascribing to emotion a great variety of mus- cular phenomena, it is necessary to remember that this particular motive extends over a wide range including even in some individuals the ordinary conditions of existence. In some temperaments and at some periods of life the most common incidents will suffice to provoke emotion. Familiar illustration of this is seen in child- hood, whose ordinary movements indicate a ready and constant yielding of this kind. Again, the spasmodic movements and involuntary gestures of youth are due to such nervous exaltation as is with them habitual, and, indeed, proper to that stage of physical development. And we may say generally that what oc- casions emotion in one, with its accompanying bodily disablement, will brace and nerve another to his fullest capacity. We cannot say beforehand how or when emotion phenomena will be excited. We know only that, while different individuals are variously re- moved from emotion, there is no one altogether beyond its reach; and that the response to such emotion is by means of particular movements, spasms, and palsies common to all mankind. But we need not confine ourselves to emotion alone, we may consider as well the ordinary movements of intelligence, those muscular acts by means of which we are always expressing during our waking hours the common current and transitions of thought and sentiment. Such movements, although of the same insti- gation as the emotional, are so directed and governed by the will as to subserve the purposes of intelligence. The period of life B 2