The water-cure in chronic diseases : an exposition of the causes, progress, and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs, and skin, and of their treatment by water, and other hygenic means / by James Manby Gully.

  • Gully, James Manby, 1808-1883.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water-cure in chronic diseases : an exposition of the causes, progress, and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs, and skin, and of their treatment by water, and other hygenic means / by James Manby Gully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The brain itsslf, containing, as it does, so large a propor- tion of the blood of the body, is, in tliis view, supplied also with a large proportion of organic nerves. The coincidence of nutritive blood-vessels (called also capillary) and nutritive nerves points to some strict organic connection between them. In met, it is the presence of the nerves which imparts to the blood-vessels the property of receiving and reacting upon impressions from agents within or \\ithout the body—a property to which the name of trritability is .given. _ Let not the reader confound irritability with sen- sibility, another property of a portion of the body. Irri- tability exists in the blood-vessels and organic nerves all over the frame—has its central organs in the chest and abdomen—begets no sensation or volition—is ever in action. Sensibility exists in the nerves of the brain and spinal cord only—has its central organs in the brain and spmal cord—begets sensation and volition, and is suspended m sleep. But, on the other hand, sensibility and sensa- tion are built upon u-ritabiUty and irritation; as thus—the bram is compo-sed of matter deposited from the blood- Tes.sel.s, and these are regulated in tlie manner and quality of their deposit by the amount and character of theu- irrita- bility; therefore, if the irritability be acted on vehemently (as m giving stimulants), the action of the blood-vessels, otherw-i.se called their irritation, is vehement also, and they deposit more than usual of the brain matter, which jtossesses the property of sensibility, and in this ivay augmented sensation is begotten. It is important to bear this m mind for the fiiture application to the doctrine of chronic (hH<ip(i~irntation precedes sensation, sensation is uuiu upon irritation. The first effect, therefore, of causes of disease—excessive colfl or heat, infectious matter, &c.—is upon that nervous .system which presides over the capillary or nutritive moofI-ve.s.scls, and whose central ])ortions are in the viscera 01 the chest ami abdomen - the ganglionic system. It IS a.scertained by numerous experiments that the first enect of all kinds of agents upon the nervously endowed capi lanes is to profluce contru(;tion of tliom-a diminution of their cahbre by the fact of their contraction. In other word.s, all agents are .stimulants to them, and bring them into nc-tion, and that action is contraction, lint as all action IS effort, such effort must, in a living Ijody, be i; 2