698 PHYSIOLOGY IN RELATION TO 



less directly, of the * indolence ' we desire, as well as of mueli that 

 we deprecate. And chloroform, thirdly, antagonises the sympathetic 

 in its very obvious action on the pupil. 



It may be bold in me to venture further in this direction ; yet, 

 as a member of the British Medical Association, and as a reader of 

 our admirable Journal, I may perhaps be allowed to say, before I re- 

 turn to my own more immediate subjects, that the account given 

 by Dr. George Johnson in that periodical for March 2ist, 1868^, 

 seems to me to indicate that epilepsy itself is but a frightful 

 caricature of neuralgia, and of the results of vaso- motor irritation 

 and contraction. The presence of dilatation of the pupil in all 

 those sets of cases may be thought perhaps but a slight indication 

 in the direction of identity of cause. High spirits and great 

 vivacity are not rarely, in both diseases alike, precursors of an 

 attack ; while counter-irritation, which botb Schiff and Setsche- 

 now^ are agreed in considering a strong and universal reflex de- 

 pressant, is not rarely, in both diseases alike, both, ex hypothesis 

 dependent on reflex vascular constriction, a preventive ^. 



sympathetic. But, taking the facts as given, we must allow that venous fulness, 

 though inferior doubtless to arterial replenishment, is still, as the growing prostate 

 of the aged, the rank hairs shooting up round old ulcers, and the cock's spur trans- 

 planted to the cock's comb, show, a more or less favourable condition for growth and 

 nutrition ; whereas pain is correlated always with malnutrition and ordinarily with 

 atrophy, and is now always spok«n of as a 'depression' rather than as 'an exaltation 

 of function.' 



^ See Brown-Sdquard, * Lectures,' 1. c. p. 1 79, ibique oitata. 



2 Setschenow's words are these ('Neue Versuche,' p. 23, 1864) : 'Es giebt endlich 

 bei meinen Gegnern einen Versuch, an dessen Richtigheit ich keinen Grund zu zweifeln 

 habe, an welchem die einseitige Trigeminus-Reizung eine starke allgemeine Reflex- 

 Depression hervorrief.* These words seem to furnish something like a rationale of 

 the picking of the nose in helminthiasis, as also of much of that counter-irritation of 

 the fifth nerve at its periphery which so-called ^nervous irritable' persons practise on 

 themselves in the way of ' tricks.' Malgaigne practised similarly on his patients, as 

 certain savage races do upon themselves with their labrets, ear- and nose-rings. 



^ These views I came to entertain without any knowledge — or perhaps I should 

 rather say without any conscious recollection — of those which Dr. Radcliffe had put 

 before the world in his lectures delivered at the College of Physicians, and published 

 in 1864 in his work on Epilepsy, Pain, and Paralysis, I have not altered what I had 

 written in consequence of my consultation of this most valuable work, to which I re- 

 sorted after seeing a reference to it in Dr. Anstie's book. This latter work I have 

 already quoted in the text, and I found it most useful and suggestive to me. I 

 believe, indeed I hope, that what 1 have written is more or less in accordance with 

 Dr. Radcliffe's views. But it is as much inferior for purposes of consultation, and in- 

 deed from other points of view also, to what Dr. Radcliffe has written, and I have read 

 of his, on the same subject, as a skull when just removed, and that in a somewhat 



