Nervous Affection cured ly Pressure of the Carotids. 1 05 



of garden beans and lentils, will iraqiiesllonably be found in 

 a great variety of other vegetables when subjected to the 

 same examination. Those which do not present a similar 

 nature in their envelopes, sometimes exhibit ligneous or 

 horny envelopes, or dry pellicles clothed or penetrated with 

 a waxy substance, or with bitter and aromatic oils, in which 

 the naturalist will recognise a similar defensive and preser- 

 vative property. 



I 



XX III. On a Case of nervous Jffection cured hy Pressure of 

 the Carotids; iviili some p/iysioluglcal Remarks. By 

 C. H. Parry, M.D.F.R.S* 



Observing that the Royal Society, of which I have the 

 honour to l)e a meuiber, occasionally receives communica- 

 tlnis illustrative of the laws of animal life, which are indeed 

 the most important branch of physics, I take the liberty of 

 calling their attention to a case, confirming a principle 

 which I long ago published, and which, I believe, had 

 never till then been remarked by pathologists. 



About the year 1786, I began to attend a young lady, who 

 laboured under repeated and violent attacks, either of head- 

 ache, vertigo, mania, dyspnoea, convulsions, or other sym- 

 ptoms usually denominated nervous. This case I described 

 at larffe to the Medical Society of London, who published 

 it in Their Memoirs, in the year 1788. Long meditation 

 on the circumstances of the case led me to conclude, that 

 all, the symptoms arose from a violent impulse of blood 

 into the vessels of the brain ; whence I inferred, that as 

 the chief canals conveying this blood were the carotid 

 arteries, it might perhaps be possible to intercept a consi- 

 derable part of it so impelled, and thus remove those sym- 

 ptoms which were the supposed effect of that inordinate 

 influx. With this view, I compressed with my thumb one 

 or both carotids, and uniformly found all the symptoms 

 removed hy that process. Those circumstances of rapidity 

 or intensity of thought, which constituted delirium, im- 

 mediately ceased, and gave place to other trains of a healthy 

 kind ; head -ache and vertigo were removed, and a stop was 

 put to convulsions, wliich the united strength of three or 

 four attendants had before been insufficient to counteract. 



That this extraordinary effect was not that of mere pres- 

 surCj o))erating as a sort of counteracting stimulus, was evi- 



• From the Philosophical Transactions for 1811, part i. 



dent : 



