20 
Mr. Home’s Lecture 
begins in the extreme parts and goes to the brain, does not 
give a satisfactory solution of those nervous agitations brought 
upon an extreme part, which only proceed for some way in the 
course of a nerve, and are there arrested, without being allowed 
to proceed to the brain. 
The circumstance of nerves having been divided, and their 
functions being restored twelve or twenty-four months after, 
when the two cut ends have been united by a new substance, 
is a strong argument against the circulation of a nervous fluid ; 
since no such effect takes place in the pervious canals of the body. 
In many diseases, there are symptoms so decidedly confined 
to the course of the nervous chords, that an impartial observer 
would be unable to account for them, in any other way than 
by supposing them to arise from some action in the nerves 
themselves. 
This idea must have been strongly impressed upon the mind 
of Dr. Mead, who, in treating of his third sort of Quincy, 
says, all the nerves are convulsed, and the patient drops down 
dead suddenly.* 
The Tic douleureux is a remarkable instance of this kind, 
both in the circumstances under which the spasmodic tremors 
are brought on, and the manner in which they are propagated 
along the nerve. 
In one case of this disease, in which the operation of dividing 
the nerve was performed, with a view to remove the complaint, 
union by the first intention did not take place ; and, during 
the time the wound was open, the inflamed state of the cut end 
of the nerve, made the patient liable to several attacks of the 
disease, similar to those he experienced before the operation ; 
* Mead’s Pnecepta Medica. Quarto, p. 434. 
