General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
Physicians are often astonished at the extraordinary effects which
some mountebanks produce in the economy, who know how to profit by
their knowledge of the cutaneous sympathies produced by tickling.
But why should we be more astonished at these phenomena, than at
the vomitings produced by an affection of the womb, at the diseases
of the liver arising from an injury of the brain, or at hemicrania
the seat of which is in the gastric viscera? The only difference
is that we can in the first instance, produce to a certain extent
those sympathetic phenomena, which we only observe in the other. Why
do we not oftener make use in medicine of the influence which the
skin when tickled exerts upon the other organs? In hemiplegia, in
adynamic, ataxic fevers, &c. who knows if the excitement of the sole
of the foot, which is so sensible, as every one knows, if that of the
hypochondrium, which is not less so in some people, &c. would not be
better, if repeated ten or twenty times a day, than the application of
a blister, the irritation of which soon passes off? Besides you would
never obtain by a blister, rubefacients, &c. means which act as much
and more upon the organic than the animal sensibility, an effect as
striking, an affection as general in the sensitive system, as by the
tickling of certain parts, a means, which acting only upon this last
species of sensibility, produces phenomena exclusively nervous; whilst
the exhalant system and the capillary with red blood are especially
affected by the others. Certainly there are cases in which one of these
means is preferable to the other. I propose to ascertain these cases.
We have not yet sufficiently analyzed the different kinds of excitement
in diseases; we have not endeavoured to profit enough by what
observation has taught us, upon the sympathies we can produce at will.
Might we not however say, that nature has established certain relations
between very remote organs, that we may be able to make use of these
relations in our means of cure? The charlatan, who employs external
tickling for certain nervous affections, is often more rational,
without knowing it, than the physician with all his pharmaceutical
means.
2d. Whenever the cutaneous exhalants or the external capillary system
from which they arise, are affected in any manner, many other parts
feel it, and this is a second order of the active sympathies of the
skin. Here are referred a great number of phenomena, of which the
following are a part.
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