On chorea / [B.G. Babington].

  • Benjamin Guy Babington
Date:
1841]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On chorea / [B.G. Babington]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    4/40 page 2
    And 3dly, Emotion.—He affirms, that the seat of emotion is below that of volition; is in the medulla oblongata; and acts along fibres which probably do not decussate;—and, that the seat of the excito-motory system is in the spinal cord. He further remarks, that volition has an aim or object; while emotion, and the excito-motory function (or vis nervosa of Haller), are aimless on the part of the individual, and fre¬ quently opposed to volition. According to Dr. HalFs earlier papers, chorea was con¬ sidered an affection of the true spinal system; affording an example of the want of harmony between the cerebral and the true spinal acts. The volition was affirmed to be normal; but the true spinal act to be abnormal, for want of a precise harmony between the two. This view, however, did not account for the absence of chorea during sleep: for it is one characteristic of the excito-motory function, that it goes on during sleep; so that a disease asserted to be de¬ pendent on a morbid condition of that function, ought to be at least as manifest during sleep—when volition, as a disturb¬ ing cause, is abstracted—as in the waking state: but the contrary is notoriously the fact; all the symptoms of chorea ceasing as soon as the consciousness of the waking state is suspended. It was necessary, therefore, to seek further for an explanation of this circumstance. “ It is well known,” says Dr. M. Hall, “ that the irregular movements in chorea, “ and in incipient paralysis agitans, subside during sleep. “ I was long perplexed to account for this fact. It was only “ by observing that these movements subside during quiet “ sleep only, and return during the agitation of dreaming, “ that I perceived that it is not sleep, but the absence of “ emotion, to which this effect is to be ascribed;—dreams “ during sleep having the same effect as emotion in our “ waking hours.” This, then, I take to be his view of the pathology of chorea—that it is a morbid condition of the organ of emotion, which has its seat in the medulla oblongata, and is wholly independent either of the brain or the gan¬ glionic system. It must be long before facts are accumulated, sufficiently numerous and decisive to establish or controvert the truth of this ingenious supposition. Cases must be examined, and
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image