Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas D. Savill.

  • Savill, Thomas Dixon, 1856-1910.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on neurasthenia / by Thomas D. Savill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    refer to a simple deficiency, such as arises from deficient nutritive power of the blood, as in anaemic states, or exhaus¬ tion from over-use. Here the clinical manifestations would probably come on slowly, would be of a more enduring kind than the preceding, though not so persistent and unchange¬ able as in organic diseases; there would be a history of the cause which produced the impoverished blood or the exhaustion ; and the case would be amenable to remedies directed to the removal of that cause, and the improvement of nutrition. Illustrations of what is here meant might be found in some cases of neurasthenia (those, for instance, due to “ over brain-work ”), the loss of memory which occurs in anaemia, and the occupation neuroses. V.—Serious alterations of function without structural changes may also certainly be produced by a deficiency, or excess, in the quantity of blood flowing to a part, without necessarily any alteration in its quality. The quantity is, we know, regulated by those important and little-studied vaso¬ motor nerves which are themselves part of the nervous system. I believe, gentlemen, that in the study of this, which might be called the angio-neurotic or vaso-motor variety, lies the solution of many hitherto unsolved problems in connection with functional disorders. The clinical features here would probably be, a paroxysmal and constantly varying character from hour to hour and day to day, with a tendency to flushings of the surface. The “ attacks ” which characterise this group of diseases (such, for example, as the syncopal attacks which are explicable by anaemia of the brain), may be followed by the passage of large quantities of pale, limpid urine ; for we are now practically certain, though for a long time it was only suspected, that the amount of blood going to the head is largely regulated by the dilatation and contraction of the vessels of the splanchnic area.