Nervous diseases Author:Allan McLane Hamilton 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: CHAPTER III. DISEASES OF THE CEREBRUM AND CEREBELLUM (continued.) SYMPTOMATIC CEREBRAL ANMIA. Synonyms.—Syncope, An6mie Ce,re,brale, Hydrocephaloid. Def... more »inition.—A morbid state characterized by an insufficient cerebral blood-supply, and expressed by impairment of consciousness, pallor, and much muscular enfeeblement. This disease is capable of quite as great modification as cerebral hyperaemia, as it may be what only appears to be a continued physiological condition, or a grave pathological state. Cerebral anaemia may occur: 1, in an acute form (syncope); 2, in a chronic form ; 3, in an infantile form (the hydrocephaloid of Marshall Hall) ; and, 4, it is localized or partial, as a result of vascular obstruction. The acute form, which may be only a simple fainting attack, or the result of shock following severe hemorrhage, is the most familiar variety. It is hardly necessary to describe the alarming and familiar condition that we occasionally meet with after post-partum hemorrhage, or protracted decu- bitus, when the patient assumes the erect posture. The chronic variety is much less serious in its earlier stages, though, when continued, it is often the forerunner of certain forms of insanity. It is symptomatized by lowered function of the cerebral ganglia, depraved nervous tone, and general intellectual apathy; for, as normal circulation is necessary for the support of healthy brain action, and as we find that rapidity of thought and emotional activity are proportionate to the increase in the cerebral blood-supply, so must insufficient circulation bring with it an impaired state of intellectual functional activity. This loss of healthy action may be expressed by drowsiness, obscured intelligence, or by irritability and restlessness. The infantile form generally follows ...« less