Nerve-vibration and excitation as agents in the treatment of functional disorder and organic disease.

  • Granville, J. Mortimer (Joseph Mortimer), 1833-1900.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nerve-vibration and excitation as agents in the treatment of functional disorder and organic disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    of reducing that irritability which I believe to be the main cause of the difficulty in walking in locomotor ataxy, a difficulty wholly distinct from the loss of sensation, which is due to affections of the posterior columns of the cord. Perhaps the most curious and suggestive results have, in my experience, been found in cases of lateral sclerosis. When the limbs jerk and fly off at tangents in trying to do anything, this is clearly not because there is loss of sensation, since it is equally apparent before and after the foot touches the ground, or the hand comes into contact with any object! The motor force discharged by the action of the cerebral centres upon the automatic centres is unable to travel along the proper nerve, and goes off in the direction of least resistance. We call this inco-ordi- nation, but that term only designates the phenomenon without in any degree explaining its nature or dis- covering its cause, which I believe to be that above mentioned. When the irritability of the centre has been exhausted reflexly by vibration of the nerves in connec- tion with it, there is generally, for a time at least, marked increase in the power, or possibility, of voluntary motion and co-ordination. One interesting fact in relation to the process of excitation by nerve-vibration may be men- tioned here. All the movements excited by percussion of the nerves in a limb have a tendency to be repeated. I have frequently incited a centre to perform a particular series of automatic movements as many as four or five times in succession, with intervals of ten or fifteen seconds, by a few minutes' vibration with the percuteurr the movements being repeated while I sat by and watched. Sometimes the observer notices the contrac-