On the treatment of sleeplessness and pain / by Sir Lauder Brunton.

  • Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.
Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the treatment of sleeplessness and pain / by Sir Lauder Brunton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ON THE TREATMENT OF SLEEPLESSNESS AND PAIN. By Sir Lauder Brunton, M.D., F.R.S., Constcltiiig Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Two of the most important symptoms connected with the nervous system are sleeplessness and pain. It is proverbial that the longest way round ds sometimes the shortest way home, and in discussing the treatment of sleeplessness, it may really be best to begin with the vital properties of a simple cell, such as an amoeba or a leucocyte, consisting only of protoplasm surrounding a nucleus. This protoplasm sends out prolongations freely in all directions, and sometimes several cells meeting together may become fused in the form of a plasmodium. The activity of the protoplasmic movements varies with different conditions. They are accelerated by heat, they are retarded by cold, they are quickened by some foreign substances, and lessened or abolished by others. The same drugs which in minute quantities quicken their movements usually retard or abolish them in large doses, and, while moderate heat quickens movement, excessive heat abolishes it either temporarily or for ever. The waste products of tissue change in the cell itself, as they accumulate, lessen its movements and diminish its vitality. A mobile cell, like a leucocyte or amoeba, can move away from the spot where its waste products have accumulated, just as a nomad moves his tent, but where cells are fixed the waste products must be removed from the cell, just as the refuse of cities must be carried away by a system of sewage while the Inhabitants remain in their places. Now, nerve cells, although in some respects the most highly developed of all those forming the tissues, are in other respects the most primitive, and this dual condition of a nerve cell is necessitated by the functions it has to fulfil, for its duties towards the organism are definite and permanent, and at the same time the external conditions under which the organism lives are constantly varying, and an extraordinary amount of mobility in the nerve cell is required to meet them. We find, then, that a nerve cell has two kinds of connection: (1) a definite prolongation, or nerve, which undergoes no very