A practical treatise on apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage) : its pathology, diagnosis, therapeutics, and prophylaxis ; with an essay on (so-called) nervous apoplexy, on congestion of the brain and serous effusion / by William Boyd Mushet.

  • Mushet, William Boyd.
Date:
1866
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage) : its pathology, diagnosis, therapeutics, and prophylaxis ; with an essay on (so-called) nervous apoplexy, on congestion of the brain and serous effusion / by William Boyd Mushet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    OPINIONS OF OLDER WRITERS. apoplexy were eminently vague and indefinite. They ascribed it to a phlegmatic or watery humour con- tained in the brain, contrary to nature; to failure of motion of the animal spirits in the cerebrum or cere- bellum; to a violent ferment engendered in the stomach; to polypous concretions; to inflammatory spissitude of the cruor; to contraction of the pia mater or arachnoid constringing the encephalon ; to intumes- cence of the cortical substance; to arrest of circula- tion within the cranium; although CuUen more correctly attributed the attack to some compression of the origm of the nerves, or to something destroying the mobility of the nervous power, and Hofi'man employed apoplexy and hemorrhagia cerebri as convertible expressions. Amongst later and contemporary writers more enlightened views have succeeded, yet considerable difference of opinion has prevailed, and, I believe, con- tinues to prevail, in the minds of very able physicians as to the pecuharities of the intracranial circulation, the histological alterations in the brain and its vessels, the presence and connection of cardiac changes, with their special nature, the existence of renal degenera- tion and the constitution of the blood in cases of sanguineous extravasation. In adducing authorities of repute, whose investiga- tions or experience entitles them to reference and consideration, I shall attempt to demonstrate that the most prominent and constant lesion which exists prior to the advent of the apoplectic seizure, and is discover- able on autopsy, has been far from invariably and fundamentally insisted on. If, however, my conclu-