Natural Hislon/ . 409 



experience goes, promises some diminution of those difficulties 

 with which the healing art has to contend. Most medical prac- 

 titioners who have attended to the subject of spinal disease, 

 niust have observed that its symptoms frequently resemble va- 

 rious and dissimilar maladies, and that commonly the function 

 of every organ is impaired whose nerves originate near the seat 

 of the disorder. The occurrence of pain in distant parts for- 

 cibly attracted my observation, and induced frequent examina- 

 tions of the spinal column ; and after some years' attention, I 

 consider myself enabled to state, that in a "great number of 

 diseases, morbid symptoms maybe discovered about the origins 

 of the nerves which proceed to the affected parts, or of those 

 spinal branches which unite with them, and that if the spine be 

 examined, more or less pain will commonly be felt by the 

 patient on the application of pressure about or between those 

 vertebrae from which such nerves emerge. If disease is con- 

 fined to one side of the body, or one arm or one leg, this ten- 

 derness will be felt on the same side of the spine only ; but if 

 central parts, or both sides of the body, or both arms or legs, 

 are diseased, tenderness will be felt on both sides of the spine! 

 This symptom has been found to attend various other affections. 

 This spinal affection may perhaps be considered as the co7ise- 

 quence of diseases, but of its existence at their commencement 

 any person may satisfy himself; and this circumstance, com- 

 bined with the success which has attended the employment of 

 topical applications to the tender parts about the vertebra, 

 appear to indicate that the cause may exist there. Prejudice 

 sometimes operates against the idea of connexions so remote ; 

 but in many instances patients are surprised at the discovery of 

 tenderness in a part, of whose implicatioH in disease they had 

 not the least suspicion. 



The opinion entertained by some of our Continental neigh- 

 bours, of the importance of the spinal brain in disease, is well 

 known. That many of our maladies are the sympathetic con- 

 sequences of the operation of a distant cause, and that diseases 

 apparently the most dissimilar may have one common orio-in, 

 have been the doctrines of some of our own most eminent 

 pathologists ; and though the injuries inflicted on our frames 

 by mechanical and chemical agencies usually manifest their 

 effects at the part where the cause has acted, we may be too 

 much disposed to generalize from these premises, and to con- 

 clude that the cause of pain, inflammation, and the other phe- 

 nomena of disease, also exist at the part where the symptoms 

 are perceived. Tiic records, however, of disease abound with 

 cases, which, combined with daily observation, and the dis- 

 coveries of morbid anatomy, tend to shake our oniifidfiice in 

 thia very natural and general inference, and to indicate that the 

 cause can, and frequently does, exist very remotely from its 



