A treatise on headache and neuralgia : including spinal irritation and a disquisition on normal and morbid sleep / by J. Leonard Corning ; with an appendix, Eye strain, a cause of headache, by David Webster.

  • Corning, J. Leonard (James Leonard), 1855-1923.
Date:
1890 [©1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on headache and neuralgia : including spinal irritation and a disquisition on normal and morbid sleep / by J. Leonard Corning ; with an appendix, Eye strain, a cause of headache, by David Webster. 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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    IDIOPATHIC INSOMNIA. Etiology.—The most important causes of this pre- eminently important variety of the affection are ex- cessive emotional disturbances combined with overtax- ation of the intellectual faculties. Among the former are profound sorrow, jealousy, fear, heavy responsibility, disappointed ambition, sus- pense, sudden pecuniary losses, and in short every factor which acts with sudden intensity upon the cen- tres of ideation and emotion. There is probably no single cause so liable to result, if unchecked, in permanent impairment of the cere- bral apparatus, as this form of insomnia. It is a fact of the highest theoretic and practical importance, that not only do the lesser forms of functional impairment of the intellectual mechanism begin with some de- rangement of sleep, but also those graver forms of mental derangement, usually included under the des- ignation of insanity, are almost invariably preceded by more or less chronic insomnia. The wear and tear incident to business and professional competition, as well as the involved nature of the social conditions of modern life have much to do with the prevalence of the disorder. The above proposition is amply substan- tiated by the statistics of insane asylums and hospi- tals. In view of these facts it is hardly necessary to insist upon the important relation sustained by dis- orders of sleep to cerebral economics and pathology.