28 PHYSIC 



parallel with those which obtain in the incidence of such 

 influences in central nerve areas and in the brain itself. 

 Thus, shock, traumatic or toxic, external or internal, may 

 so profoundly affect and depress the epigastric nervature 

 as to deplete it of nerve energy, and thereby paralyse 

 the organs directly dependent for innervation upon it, as 

 well as those, such as the cardio-pulmonary immediately, 

 and others more remotely, related to it. The lethal effects 

 of shock here are so immediate and profound, and the 

 sensation of sickness is so short as not to be consciously 

 realisable, therefore it can only be in cases of minor degree 

 where the sensation of sickness is consciously appreciated 

 by its subject complete paralysis preventing, and partial 

 paralysis allowing, appreciation in the respective instances, 

 according to the degree of intensity of causation. 



The sensation of sickness being a physiological mani- 

 festation of the incidence of nervine disturbance, whereby 

 impressions are made on the local epigastric nervature for 

 ordinary organic purposes, and on the sensorium for 

 extraordinary or systemic purposes, we must regard it as 

 a nervine function normally exercised for maintaining the 

 life and health of the body, but capable of explosive dis- 

 plays or neural breakdowns incompatible with the main- 

 tenance of health or even the continuance of life. 



The comparative unprotectedness of the epigastric 

 neural structures lays them open to many traumatic 

 interferences from which the central nerve structures are 

 exempt, and hence to a wide range of morbid conditions 

 of a transitory and more or less persistent type from which 

 the central nervous system is almost entirely exempt on 

 account of its anatomical position and remoteness from 

 external contact and consequent liability to lethal impres- 

 sions. 



Sickness may be described as an exaggerated form of 

 what is usually a sympathetic or sub-conscious sensation, 

 intelligible, so to speak, only to the sympathetic nervature, 

 and used as a guide by that system in its direction of the 

 organic work of the body, and is continuous, on the one 

 hand, with the absolutely unconscious sympathetic inner- 

 vation, and with conscious systemic cerebration and 

 innervation, on the other. In this respect it may be 



