Treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous System. - new book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: can be such as to evoke sound and healthy thoughts. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the subjects of cerebral congestion who insist upon attending to their avocations, and on concocting schemes for obtaining wealth or fame, should perpetrate acts which result in the loss of fortune, or the acquisition of a reputation far different from that sought. The cause of cerebral congestion, whatever it be, must, if practicable, be removed, and it must continue removed. CHAPTER II. C K R t: n a A i. A.njbhia.. In cerebral anaemia the quantity of blood in the brain is either reduced below the normal standard, or the quhlity of the circulating fluid is impoverished. The first-named condition is due either to direct Joss of blood, to deficient action of the heart, to impaired nutrition, or to some cause preventing the due access of blood to the brain; the second to disease of some organ concerned in hscmatosis or to a gen eral cachexia. The two states very often coexist, and they may properly be con- gidered together. Symptoms.?In cerebral anaemia suddenly induced from profuse haemorrhage, the most prominent symptom is syncope. Vertigo is generally an attendant, and there are paleness of the features and coldness of the extremities. The pulse is frequent, thread-like, and weak. The respiration is feeble and accelerated. But, when the accession is more gradual, headache is very generally present. It may be, and usually is, confined to a limited portion of the head, sometimes to a spot not larger than the point of the finger. A feeling of constriction, especially across the brows, is complained of, and the vertigo, notably increased on rising from the recumbent posture, is as troublesome a feature as in the worst attacks of cerebral congestion. There is ringing in...