Epilepsy; its symptoms, treatment, and relation to other chronic convulsive diseases / [Sir J. Russell Reynolds].

  • Reynolds, J. Russell (John Russell), Sir, 1828-1896.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epilepsy; its symptoms, treatment, and relation to other chronic convulsive diseases / [Sir J. Russell Reynolds]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a complication in fifty per cent., or iifty per cent, of the cases are abortive, or imperfect. Yet, notwithstanding this constant result of the use of statistics in pathology, it is con- venient to retain, as we do, many names—of more or less vague meaning and applicability—to denote diseases which we feel are as yet very inadequately described. It is always highly undesirable to change the names of things, and unless change is imperatively demanded it should be avoided; but the ap- plication of the numerical method to the study of disease must result, occasionally, in the disturbance of our nomenclature. The names by which the greater number of diseases are known express either their essential or prominent symptoms ; or some structural condition supposed to be primary to, or causative of the sjrmptoms; or the general sum of all the morbid changes. Under these names, and therefore upon different principles, groups of cases are formed; but each case, in addition to that which it is necessary for it to possess in order to be placed in this or the other category, presents other phenomena than those implied in the name, and than those essential to its position in the group. That which is essential is no matter for statistics in the sense here intended; in every case of pneimionia there must be iiaflanmiation of the lung; but in every case of pneumonia there need not be pain in the chest: it is less common than is that symptom in pleuiitis ; and how much less common it may be highly important for us to know. The diagnosis among many allied diseases is often framed upon a consideration of the proportion borne to each other by symptoms which are, more or less, common to them all; and the diagnostic value of symptoms is in direct relation to the de- finiteness of our information about them. Such definiteness can only be gained by the numerical method. The diagnosis of a case is, practically, the process by which, knowing some of its symptoms or phenomena, we infer the others; theoretically, it is the discovery of its primary or essential fact. It is the deductive application of pathology to the particular instance in question; the name we assign to the