206 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1751. 



was almost wasted, as well as the plexus choroides, of which some few vestiges 

 only remained. On the contrary, the other vessels, which lined the inside of 

 this sack, were very visible. 



As the brain is a soft viscus without elasticity, it manifestly appears, that it 

 could not possibly resume its natural form, how slowly soever he had evacuated 

 the waters ; but perhaps the operation would have succeeded, if the seat of the 

 dropsy had been on the outside of the brain. However that be, this trocart to 

 him seems useful for several operations; and this is his first motive for presenting 

 it to the Royal Society. His second motive for so doing is, the consequences 

 which may be deduced from this observation with regard to the apoplexy. 



How can one believe, that the apoplexy is caused by the extravasation of the 

 liquids, or by the fullness of the vessels, after having seen a brain filled with 

 water, and distended so vastly as this was, without any one apoplectic symptom? 

 Verduc, who in his pathology proposes an objection similar to this against his 

 own system, endeavours to solve it, but has not succeeded. The objection re- 

 mains victorious. 



Nevertheless, when the brain of a person dead of an apoplexy is opened, and 

 extravasated blood is found in it, his death is imputed to this extravasation alone, 

 and the apoplexy is pronounced sanguineous. This has happened on the death 

 of M. de Frequienne, president of our parliament. On opening him M. leCat 

 found about a tea-spoonfuU of blood extravasated within the medulla oblongata, 

 between the 3d and 4th ventricle, at the beginning of the latter. Could so small 

 a quantity of blood press on the principles of the nerves so as totally to intercept 

 the course of the spirits? No, certainly; foF this would be mistaking the effect 

 for the cause. This extravasated blood was but an accident owing to the con- 

 vulsive motions of the dura mater, and of the vessels of the whole basis of the 

 skull, seized with the apoplectic disorder, which most commonly is nothing else 

 but the matter of the gout or rheumatism fixing on this source of the nerves. 

 Now this general attack, which swells and distends the dura mater throughout 

 this whole basis, makes the blood stagnate in the vessels, some of the weakest of 

 which burst, and at the same time closes all the canals of the nerves, and con- 

 sequently kills the patient. Unless a person would choose to say, that those 

 broken canals were those, which concurred in the substance of the brain to the 

 formation of the spirits, that give motion to the heart ; which opinion is not free 

 from difficulties; since it is well known, that this organ receives the influences 

 of several nerves at a time, all which ought to bear their part in this accident, 

 which, after all, is but the rupture of a simple capillary vessel. 



The drift of these reflections is to engage practitioners to have somewhat less 

 confidence in their theories, and, for example, not to make a poor apoplectic 

 patient die under the lancet; a thing which he had seen several times, from the 



