Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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During the past fall, however, the general health of this patient had run down, and the old hip affection had become the most prominent symptom. She was again treated, but, I regret to say, with not, as yet, so flattering success; but that she will recover ultimately, and be restored to health, usefulness, and happiness, I have not a doubt. Headaches. When tracing the cause of headaches, what do we learn from anatomical considerations, as to the probable source of pain within the cranium when a person is the subject of a true and profound headache ? The source of distress, says Dr. Symonds, does not appear to be in the nervous matter, vesicular or tubular, either in that of the cerebral hemispheres or of the cerebellum. No evidence of feeling has ever been obtained by vivi-sectors, till they approach the sensory ganglia — the thalami optici and the corpora quadrigemina. But these, on the contrary, are the centres of sensation to all parts of the body, as well as to the head. All analogy points to some cer- tain nerves as the source or medium of the pain. Numerous as are the nerves that come out of the cranium, there are to ocular view but very few that go into it. A branch of the sub- occipital accompanies the vertebral artery; but a large majority of the other nerves, destined for intra-cranial purposes, are derived from the sympathetic. These, then, we may feel satis- fied, are the nerves which are of the chiefest interest to our present inquiry. Nerves of this class, we know, accompany blood vessels ; and when we observe the large amount of these vessels, — as the brain and its membranes are more liberally supplied with blood than any other organ, the quantity being computed as one fifth of the blood of the whole body, — we might here, without searching farther, realize the enormous amount of minute network of ganglionic nerves. By the microscopic examinations of modern anatomists, in fact, they are traced in the greatest abundance. There is also found a vast interlacement of nerves at the