EPILEPSY AND APOPLEXY. 259 



its peculiarities operate. Some, reasoning upon 

 the inelasticity of liquids, and fortified by the expe- 

 riments of the late Dr. Kellie of Leith, have con- 

 tended that the quantity of blood contained within 

 the cranium is invariable ; inasmuch as the brain, 

 with its membranes and vessels, occupies the whole 

 interior of a rigid globe, which, by the atmospheric 

 pressure, is kept constantly filled. Others, disputing 

 the accuracy both of Dr. Kellie's experiments and 

 reasoning, and relying upon the congested appear- 

 ance of the brain not unfrequently met with, and 

 upon the evident expansion of that organ accom- 

 panying the ventricular contraction and the act of 

 expiration (as seen after the operation of trephining), 

 conclude that the quantity of blood in the cerebral 

 vessels may be increased, and by its accumulation 

 give rise to morbid phenomena. The latter view has 

 recently been very ably supported by Dr. George 

 Burrows, of London, while the arguments in favour 

 of the Edinburgh doctrine, countenanced by Munro, 

 Kellie, and Abercrombie, have been urged with 

 equal force and clearness by the lamented Dr. John 

 Reid, who was, however, careful to substitute the 

 word "fluid" for "blood."* I must confess that 

 the discussion of this question, up to the present 

 time, seems to me scarcely to have embraced the 

 point most immediately connected with cerebral pa- 

 thology, and I feel the more at liberty to give utter- 



* This doctrine has also received the able advocacy of Dr. Watson 

 in his published Lectures ; and by no pathologist has the whole 

 question been more philosophically studied, or more effectually 

 reconciled with the results of actual experience. 



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