Vital and Physical Motion. 145 



granular bits of elderly protoplasm in which amaeboid 

 movements have come to an end. 



The same explanation is also found to hold good in 

 convulsion, spasm, tremor, neuralgia, or any other case of 

 exaggerated vital movement. In none of these cases is 

 there reason to believe that any nerve-centre is raised 

 into a higher state of vitality by being supplied with 

 more arterial blood than usual, and that this exaggerated 

 vital motion is the direct result of .this change. The 

 facts without exception point in the opposite direction. 

 Where there is supposed to be excess of arterial blood 

 there is really deficiency. Thus, in epilepsy there is, 

 first, a failure of circulation - as is shown in the ghastly 

 pallor of the face which ushers in the fit and then 

 a state of suffocation a state in which arterial blood 

 ceases to be formed and supplied to any part of the 

 system. The actual convulsion is coincident with actual 

 suffocation: and even the hard and frequent pulse at the 

 height of the fit is in keeping with this view, for the blood 

 which escapes when an opening is made in the artery at this 

 time is, not red, as it is commonly supposed to be, but 

 black, as in suffocation it always is not arterial, that is to 

 say, but venous. So far as the absence of arterial blood 

 is concerned the case of epilepsy is strictly parallel with 

 that of the convulsion which attends upon death by 

 bleeding. And as in these cases so also in other cases 

 of convulsion or spasm or tremor or neuralgia or any other 

 form of exaggerated vital motion, though not always so 

 obviously, the facts when carefully sifted, always showing, 

 in opposition to current notions on the subject, that the 

 exaggerated vital motion is connected, not with a state 

 in which a vital property of irritability is roused into 

 preternatural activity by an excessive supply of arterial 

 blood to one or other of the great nerve-centres, but 



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