An inquiry into the nature and causes of epilepsy : with the function of the spleen; and the use of the thyroid body ... / John Jackson.

  • Jackson, John, -1855.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the nature and causes of epilepsy : with the function of the spleen; and the use of the thyroid body ... / John Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    71/124 (page 59)
    sequence of cerebral, ancl convulsions of spinal con- gestion ; and, as insensibility and convulsions are the symptoms produced by fatal haemorrhage, it is little less than certain that they are the effects of the same proximate cause which gives rise to them in poisoning by hydrocyanic acid, and in the epileptic paroxysm, namely, cerebro-spinal congestion. The way in which cerebro-spinal congestion is pro- duced by hydrocyanic acid is sufficiently manifest, and has been already pointed out; but the mode of its production by loss of blood is not very apparent. It certainly cannot be owing to the right cavities refusing to propel through the lungs the blood which is returned to them. Stagnation of the circulation through the head and spine (the proximate cause, probably, of the insensibility and muscular relaxation attendant on syncope) no doubt precedes the conges- tion ; the latter being, as the convulsions indicate, neaily the last effect consequent on the loss of blood. We have now to endeavour to ascertain in what way the cerebro-spinal congestion is produced which gives rise to the insensibility and convulsions of epi- lepsy. It was formerly observed, that if the quan- tity of blood supplied to the right auricle, and the force with which it enters it by the inferior auricular opening, weie suddenly and temporarily augmented by a force greater than that with which the blood descends into that cavity from the superior cava (and which sudden and temporary augmentation ( ou d only be the effect of an inordinate rush of } 00tl fro»i the hepatic veins), the right cavities,