Clinical lectures on neurasthenia.

  • Savill, Thomas Dixon, 1856-1910.
Date:
1902
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Clinical lectures on neurasthenia. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    system, so intimately connected with all the other systems, specialisation surely needs but little justification. Consider for a moment the point to which I just now referred, the close association of the nervous and cardio-vascular systems. The latter supplies the nervous system with nutrition and oxygen, as it does the other systems, but, more than this, an asso- ciation exists which does not obtain in other instances, which has most far-reaching effects. I refer to the control which the nervous system exercises over all the organs of the body through the mediation of the cardio-vascular system. The importance of the sympathetic portion of the nervous system in this respect cannot be over-estimated ; yet it is practically a sealed book. Orv account, therefore, of the vastness of the subject, its difficulty and intricacy, no less than the special opportunities afforded by this Infirmary, it is unnecessary to say more in justification of constituting the study of diseases of the nervous system a legitimate speciality. Methods of Research and Clinical Investigation. Let us turn for one moment to the various methods of research adopted in the investigation of the pathology of the nervous system. It is usual to mention four methods by which neuro-pathology has at different times become advanced. First, a study of embryology and development teaches us a good deal concerning the course of the fibres and the anatomical relations of the different parts of the central nervous system. Secondly, the functions of the different portions of the brain and the relation of the several columns in the spinal cord to one another have often been revealed by means of the secondary degeneration which takes place whenever the peripheral part of a nerve fibre is cut off from its central cell of origin.