Читать книгу On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity, Epilepsy, Catalepsy, and Hysteria in Females онлайн

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ssss1. London, Churchill, 1864.

I am so pleased to be supported by my old friend and colleague in views that I myself have long entertained, that I intend, without further preface, to make his researches the whole substratum of my work; and hope to show how, on the basis of Dr. Jones’s experiments, it is possible to prove the philosophy of my own practice.

Whichever of the terms, “inhibitory influence” (Handfield Jones and Lister), “reflex relaxation” (Brinton), or “reflex paralysis” (Brown-Séquard), be used, the fact is ceded by all, that “the energetic operation of an afferent nerve” (Lister), or some impression acting injuriously on an afferent nerve (Handfield Jones), or, again, “an actually existing irritation” (Brown-Séquard), exerts an injurious effect on its nerve centre, this state being, as Dr. Brown-Séquard thinks, increased or diminished according to the activity of the irritation, and ceasing with its entire removal, or, more probably, as Dr. Handfield Jones affirms, persisting after the cessation of the cause which has morbidly affected it. This latter view appears to me the more generally correct one, because it can hardly be expected that a gradual disease will be suddenly removed, there having been no time for recovery of nerve power.