of the walls, we may have pains, vertigo, delirium, coma. Vomiting. Intolerance of light, squinting, and amaurosis, with dilated pupils. Speech and deglutition affected. Muscular contractions, hemiplegia, or occasionally paraplegia. The face sometimes paralysed. In the remarkable case of the hydrocephalic man, Cardinal, it was observed that dreaming never occurred.

When the anterior lobes of the brain have been exclusively affected, there has been noticed paralysis of the limbs and face (according to Serres, the legs particularly ?), the former on the contrary side to the lesion, but the latter (ptosis), in some cases, on the same side. When there has been facial paralysis, the senses have been sometimes unaffected. Contractions or tetanic symptoms. Amaurosis. Speech and memory, particularly of names or language, injured. Delirium and other mental disturbance.

In cases where the middle lobes have been diseased, paralysis of the arm, leg, and face, have been common. Speech and deglutition affected. Convulsions and epilepsy. The mind affected.

When the posterior lobes are diseased, paralysis may affect the arm, or leg, and face (according to some the arm particularly), the facial paralysis sometimes on the same side as the disease, on the opposite side to that of the arm- or legparalysis. Epilepsy, coma, delirium, and misapplication of words. Squinting and amaurosis.

The corpora striata.-In one remarkable case, reported by Abercrombie, sensation in the limbs was affected, and not motion. The paralysis is often in the leg if these bodies are affected in front (Serres and others, who are contradicted by Andral), but it also occurs in the arm and face. Vomiting, convulsions, or epilepsy, difficult deglutition, affected vision and speech. Strabismus. Memory and intellect affected. Coma. Epilepsy and coma have occurred when the corpus callosum has been affected—the former also when the pituitary gland or sella turcica was diseased, together with vomiting, coma, strabismus, and amaurosis.

When the thalami are affected, there appears to be crossed paralysis, of the arm particularly. Amaurosis. Paralysis, both in regard to sensation and motion.

If the fornix is affected, the speech is imperfect, there is double vision, contractions and convulsions of the limbs. Incoherence, loquacity, delirium, stupor, and coma.

When the cerebellum is diseased, it would appear that there are spasms and unsteadiness of the muscles, vertigo, tetanic symptoms, hysteria, tremors, violent and peculiar motions, convulsions, epilepsy. Pain. If the middle lobe is affected, sexual symptoms (Serres). Crossed paralysis (of the lower extremities according to some). Vomiting. Speech and swallowing affected, also vision, squinting, deafness. Memory affected, stupor, and sometimes sudden apoplexy, but commonly the mind is not extinct.

Pons Varolii. Crossed paralysis. Sensation not always destroyed with motion. Rigidity of the limbs, extensors or flexors. Speech and the sensation of the face affected. Ulceration of the cornea in consequence of injury of the fifth nerve. The head may be distorted backwards. Squinting, dilation of the pupil, ptosis, deafness. Respiration and deglutition appear to have been affected, particularly when the corpora olivaria, crura cerebelli, or corpora quadrigemina were diseased. The latter, according to Serres, when diseased, have affected the command over the movements, and caused a sort of chorea; but according to others, vision is more affected. In some cases of paralysis, articulation and not the voice or understanding of language is affected; but either may be so, and also the memory, causing the use of wrong words. Some paralytics write the proper words, but are not able to speak them, or may understand them when written, but not when spoken.

Nerves. When the recurrent has been pressed upon, loss of voice has occurred. The tongue may be protruded well or laterally, and at the same time difficulty of swallowing be present. If the facial nerve is affected, the lesion in the brain may be on the opposite side to the paralysis. If deafness occurs

with paralysis of the facial, the prognosis may be serious. In paralysis of the fifth nerve taste is said to become extinct, the nostril with the face insensible, but smell remains perfect, the cornea becomes opaque. In paralysis of the third and sixth nerves the eye may be turned inwards from the action of the involuntary muscles, but the same may occur from paralysis of the sixth only. In fracture of the skull blindness may occur on the opposite side. In a wound over the right eye, the fifth nerve, on the opposite side, was affected; this crossed effect is not always the case.

Symptoms of spinal disease may exist, and no corresponding post-mortem appearance be afterwards discovered. Spinal affection may cause disturbance of the intellectual powers, or affect the voice, speech, hearing, and sight, as in the case of the Marquess de Causan, as reported by Portal, or disturb the motions of the eyes or face. Difficulty of swallowing, oppression, palpitation and dyspnoea are common symptoms; also effects like those seen in chorea, tetanus, or hydrophobia. The paralysis present is commonly paraplegia, or of the rectum and bladder. Sensation or motion may be most affected. In spinal injury the bladder and abdominal muscles may be affected and not the legs. In fracture of the spine the penis is often erect, and reflex movements may generally be produced.

We have thus ventured, in the above chapter, to review this difficult subject-the nervous system, and have endeavoured to add our mite towards its comparative anatomy. However much may remain to be elucidated, we think we may affirm that during the present century much has been rendered plain by the labours of such men as Bell, Reid, Hall, or Du Bois Reymond, so that we doubt not, that in the course of a few more years, the different functions of the cerebro-spinal system will be correctly appropriated to their corresponding parts or ganglia, so far as they are dependent on such an arrangement, and not simply on that connexion of the spiritual and corporeal, which must for ever remain a mystery.

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ΔΙΟΣΚΟΥΡΙΔΟΥ

CHAPTER III.

Physiological and pathological chemistry-or chemistry in connexion. with the functions, changes, and diseases of our bodies.

CHEMISTRY properly applied must always have a beneficial influence on the progress of medicine, whilst, on the contrary, when misapplied, it has often notably retarded it. For a long period, previous to the time of Boerhaave, and particularly in his country, such a misapplication had been prevalent in our art; diseases being attributed to chemical derangement of the fluids, or to processes of a chemical nature, without any appeal to the experimental proofs. In Boerhaave's writings, illustrious though he was in other

These chemical

respects, such errors are but too common. doctrines waged a successful contest with the mechanical reasonings of the Italian school, being certainly more applicable in medicine; they afterwards succumbed before those of the vitalists and solidists.

The theories of Stahl particularly tended to put an end to this state of things.* We may safely conclude, that to set down diseases exclusively to a chemical alteration of the fluids, or to actions in the economy identical with those of chemistry, the vital force being totally ignored, is a grave error. It is probable that few maladies arise, primarily and solely, from morbid chemical changes, though these often attend disease, and their investigation throws light upon it, and, like other symptoms, such changes often require counteraction. Thus in gout, diabetes, or typhus, we have, very clearly, chemical changes, but we opine that such diseases are not properly treated by simply endeavouring to correct such deviations.

ease.

These remarks apply to healthy actions, as well as to disIf there are chemical phenomena in digestion, they alone do not constitute the whole function. The stomach is not a mere laboratory; no chemist can produce one of the principal organic elements formed by the vital chemistry of plants or animals, such as albumen or starch: the saliva may be a ferment, the gastric juice an acid solvent, the bile a soap, but still a presiding vital principle in the system regulates all. We cannot doubt that electricity circulates in our nerves and muscles, but it is not proved that it is identical with the nervous power, or more than in correlation with it, like caloric, for instance, or the chemical force itself.

But placing the chemical improvements in pharmacy, and particularly the interesting discoveries of new medicinal principles out of the question, and admitting that organic

* See the Introduction to Cullen's "First Lines."