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.

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    the convulsions of epilepsy (and also of hydrophobia, and the spasm of tetanus), to “ a morbid accumulation of blood, or other irritation in the spinal nervous mass:” but what this other irritation in the spinal nervous mass could possibly be, we are not in- formed,—probably because it was no easy matter to define. Lt has long- been known, although no explanation of the fact has been hitherto offered, that a tight ligature placed around the thigh will succeed in preventing, arresting, or mitigating, the epileptic paroxysm; it affords the same relief also in hydro- phobia, and would probably be beneficial in violent hysteria. The effect of this procedure is the same in kind, and only differs in degree, from compression of the inferior cava against the bodies of the lum- bar vertebrae; both measures in the manner above explained relieving the cerebro-spinal congestion. There may nevertheless be some doubt still en- tertained, whether a rush of blood into the heart from the hepatic veins can prevent the ingress of blood into the auricle by the superior cava ; whe- ther the spleen, after all, is to be regarded as the offending organ in the production of epilepsy, even admitting that in abortion the offending organ is the placenta; or whether epilepsy is to be viewed as a kind of attempt, or mock effort at abortion on the part of the spleen. It must, however, be remem- bered that both epilepsy and abortion are induced by exactly the same exciting causes, and that there is the closest similarity in the organization of the L