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MEDICINE IN MODERN TIMES. 697 



that organisation; and the two things are well-nigh equally ex- 

 clusive the one of the other in both cases. Perhaps the mere 

 apposition of the two sets of occurrences side by side is sufficient to 

 justify my conclusion that the congestive stage of the physiological 

 experiment is not the homologue of the painful one of the morbid 

 history, mere apposition being sometimes sufficient to decide us on 

 more difficult homologies, at least in the negative. But I may 

 add, that the argument from the juvantia ac laedentia, as the older 

 physicians and physiologists phrased it, gives some confirmation to 

 the view which teaches that spasm and starvation go in company 

 with pain ; relaxation and congestion only with tenderness. I will 

 put the facts before you as premises ; you will piece them together 

 into an argument for yourselves. Chloroform^ is the greatest of 

 juvantia in neuralgia ; chloroform, indeed, and ether, in equal parts, 

 as recommended ^ by Mr. R. Ellis, may be safely entrusted to a safe 

 person for self-administration; and, if taken persistently as well 

 as prudently, may keep the attack in suspense until the enemy, 

 from weariness or chronometric obligations, retreats or withdraws ^. 

 But this great reducer of neuralgia, this great and blessed producer 

 of 'indolence/ as Locke called it, is also the great reducer of 

 muscular spasm, as we know from its action and our employment 

 of it in cases of hernia, and, indeed, of tetanus. Now, if it relaxes 

 muscles which we can see in the limbs and trunk without the aid 

 of a microscope, we may think it not improbable that it will do the 

 like by muscles which we cannot see without the aid of that instru- 

 ment, in the arterioles. Chloroform, secondly, has the reverse 

 action to that of the sympathetic, in dilating the blood-vessels of 

 the head*; as, indeed, also has alcohol, itself too a producer, though 



^ For action of chloroform, see further, 'Chloroform, its Action and Administration,' 

 by A. E. Sansom, M.B., 1865 \ ' Asthma/ by Hyde Salter, M.D., 1868, p. 216. 



* See 'Lancet/ February, May, June, 1866, and pamphlets published by Hardwicke 

 and Brettell. 



3 The anaesthetic eflfect of bisulphide of carbon in various kinds of headache, as 

 pointed out by the late Dr. Kennion ('Medical Times and Gazette,* July 18, 1868, 

 p, 77), may, perhaps, be similarly explained. 



* I find that both Mr. Durham ('Guy's Hospital Reports,' iii. vi. i860, p. 153) and 

 Hammond (' On Wakefulness,' p. 25) are agreed that, in animals under chloroform, 

 the veins of the brain become distended. I do not, however, lay any great stress upon 

 this fact ; firstly, because the veins may become distended under the influence, not so 

 much of the chloroform, as of the more or less partial hindrance to respiration which 

 its inhalation implies; and, secondly, because we have, as yet (Funke, vol. ii. pp. 

 769-773), no very distinct evidence for the production of effects on the veins by the 



