IN presenting this work to my readers, I may fairly be expected to preface it with a few words of explanation. In the year 1868 a part of my course on "Medicine" delivered at Guy's Hospital relating to nervous diseases was published in a periodical form. Ever since that time the lectures have been frequently perused by my pupils, who have constantly demanded of me their reprint in a separate form. To this appeal, so often made, I now respond in the present volume. It contains my original lectures with the additional matter which a subsequent ten years has enabled me to accumulate. Much of this has already appeared in the 'Guy's Hospital Reports,' but its repetition in this volume was inevitable, since it is evident that the cases which have been thought of sufficient importance to publish separately would necessarily be the most valuable ones with which to illustrate my lectures. The order of the subjects which I have found useful for lecture cannot be justified on scientific grounds, but I may console myself with the conviction that with our present existing nomenclature it is impossible to frame a systematic view of nervous diseases on any rational basis whatever, be it anatomical, pathological, or clinical. I have therefore endeavoured to make the best of a heterogeneous system. Had I under other circumstances believed that there was room for such a work as this, I should have prepared to sit down and write a systematic treatise, which would thus have enabled me to omit many of the explanations now offered expressly for the instruction of students, and to add more precise scientific material than the present occasion demands. I might then also perhaps have attempted in my descriptions of disease to approach nearer to a scientific method. Time would then also have permitted me to make appropriate references to the various authors whose works would have surrounded me, and to mention more emphatically the original observers in this department of medicine. The form of a lecture, however, does not admit of a reference to the source of information from which the instructor draws. He offers what he has in his possession, but how much of his wealth has been acquired by his own |