General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 1 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
1st. When the animal sensibility is sympathetically raised in a part,
this does not always depend on nervous communications; for oftentimes
the organ in which is the material cause of pain does not receive any
nerves, as the tendons, the cartilages, &c.; then it cannot communicate
by them with that in which this pain is found. On the other hand we
have seen above that it is still very uncertain if the nerves are the
only agent that carry to the brain the internal sensations; we cannot
say then that the affected organ acts at first upon the brain by their
means, and that this reacts afterwards upon the part in which the
pain is seated, by the nerves that go to it. Can we conceive that the
cellular texture should be an agent for the communication of pain,
which is insensible to it itself? Observe also that the parts that are
the most abundantly supplied with this texture, as the scrotum, the
mediastinum, &c. are not those that sympathize the most. The same is
true of the blood vessels, which, by their nature, are not fitted to
transmit animal sensibility, and which besides do not exist in all the
organs.
It appears that all sympathetic pains are nothing but an aberration of
the internal sensitive principle, which refers to a part a sensation,
the cause of which exists in another. Thus when the extremity of the
stump gives the patient pain, who has just undergone amputation, the
sensitive principle perceives the sensation correctly, though it is
deceived as to the place whence it comes; it refers it to the foot
which no longer exists. It is the same when a stone irritating the
bladder, produces pain at the glans penis. Thus all sympathy of animal
sensibility is characterized by the integrity of the part in which we
find the pain, and by the cessation of this sympathetic pain, when the
cause that acts elsewhere has ceased. It is then probable, when a part
suffers sympathetically, that that which is the seat of the material
cause of the pain acts first upon the brain, either by the nerves, or
by some means with which we are unacquainted, and that when the brain
perceives the sensation, it is mistaken as to it, and refers it to a
part from which it does not arise; or it refers it at the same time to
the part from which it arises, and to another where it does not; this
happens frequently. The stone for example, produces suffering at the
same time in the bladder and at the end of the glans penis.
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