On the seat of headache in the sympathetic nerve, and on some of the rules of treatment, drawn from its connexion with chronic ill health / [William Seller].

  • Seller, William, 1798-1869
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the seat of headache in the sympathetic nerve, and on some of the rules of treatment, drawn from its connexion with chronic ill health / [William Seller]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tation is supposed to spread to the region where nervous filaments of the dura mater, or of the scalp, originate ; and thence the con¬ sciousness of pain is referred to those parts. The objections to this mode of explanation will be stated after a short consideration of the remaining views. The second view assumes, that though the encephalon be generally destitute of sensibility in health, yet, like some other parts, it may become sensible under certain morbid conditions, and that this sensibility is independent of nerves, being altogether sui generis. Thus the hemispheres of the brain are in so far concerned in every sensation of pain, from whatever source, that though they may not be necessary, as some think,1 to the mere consciousness of the sen¬ sation, yet they are necessary to the remembrance of the conscious¬ ness. But as in man, when awake and free from the influence of such agents as chloroform and ether, there is uniformly the remem¬ brance of pain, the hemispheres of the brain must be admitted to be ordinary agents in every complete sensation of pain. When, then, a sufficiently powerful morbid cause operates on the substance of the hemispheres, there may be, according to this view, what is equi¬ valent to a concentration into one of all the several ordinary steps or stages in the process of sensation; these are, 1, an impression on the extremity of a nerve ; 2, the extension of that impression to the sensory tract of the nervous centre; 3, a primary physical change there ; 4, a transmission upwards through the white fila¬ ments to the hemispheres; 5, a secondary physical change there; 6, a consciousness complete enough to be remembered. Or the second view simply amounts to this, that the hemispheres, being the essential seat of sensation, must be capable of sensation, at least when the impression is of sufficient force, even though the subordinate instruments in the ordinary process cannot come into operation. Of this view also hereafter. The third conceivable view of this question is that here proposed for adoption. It is contained in the three following propositions : —1, That the susceptibility to pain, under certain morbid condi¬ tions—some temporary, some permanent—is no special endowment of the substance of the encephalon, but the result of the ordinary law of susceptibility to pain in the vascular solids. 2, That it is not the encephalon, either in its grey or white matter, or the nerves concerned in its proper functions, which are subject to the first effect of irritation in the production of headache, but the nerves subservient to its vitality as an organ of the animal machine. 3, That these nerves are the filaments of the sympathetic, diffused throughout the encephalon in company with the nutrient capil- aries. How far these views bear examination must now be considered. 1 Grainger on the Structure and Functions of the Spinal Cord, p 11.