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IV. On a Case of nervous Affection cured by Pressure of the 
Carotids; with some physiological Remarks . By C. H. Parry, 
M.D.F.R'8. 
Read 20th December, 1810. 
Observing that the Royal Society, of which I have the 
honour to be a Member, occasionally receives communications 
illustrative of the laws of animal life, which are indeed the 
most important branch of physics, I take the liberty of calling 
their attention to a case, confirming a principle which I long 
ago published, and which, I believe, had never till then been 
remarked by pathologists. 
About the year 1 786 , 1 began to attend a young lady, who 
laboured under repeated and violent attacks, either of head- 
ach, vertigo, mania, dyspnoea, convulsions, or other symptoms 
usually denominated nervous. This case I described at large 
to the Medical Society of London, who published it in their 
Memoirs, in the year 1788. Long meditation on the circum- 
stances of the case, led me to conclude, that all the symptoms 
arose from a violent impulse of blood into the vessels of the 
brain ; whence I inferred, that as the chief canals conveying 
this blood were the carotid arteries, it might perhaps be pos=- 
sible to intercept a considerable part of it so impelled, and 
thus remove those symptoms which were the supposed effect 
of that inordinate influx. With this view, I compressed with 
my thumb one or both carotids, and uniformly found all the 
symptoms removed by that process. Those circumstances of 
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