Nerve

“ If, then, minute specific nerves of pain exist throughout the body and are gathered up into various nerve trunks, the fact that most sensory nerves do give some pain can no longer seem remarkable, or be counted as evidence that pain is an inseparable or general attribute of the other senses. ”

“ And the specific sensation, or movement, which results from stimulation of a nerve depends not on the nerve, but on the mechanism of which the nerve is one element. Sensations of touch, temperature, and pain are assuredly specific; they are as unlike each other as a sensation of taste is unlike a sensation of smell. ”

“ Nervous Attacks.—What we call, for want of a better name, "nerve force," or "nerve action," is at any one time a definite quantity. In health it is distributed to all the sets of nerves equally, so that all work in harmony. ”

“ We are thus kept endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the impressions which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred by us to the part from which they came. Now, when the part is cut off, the nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump impressions which are as usual referred by the brain to the lost parts, to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like a bell-wire. ”

“ At the surface of the body and limbs, the external termini of the nerves are exposed to disturbance by contact with an external object. Along the highly sensitive and minute conductor, the nerve which has by contact with an external object at its outer extremity received a slight shock, there passes through the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the nerve a wave of disturbance, or a succession of such waves. This disturbance reaches the brain, the great nerve-center, where it becomes a feeling. ”

“ There is nothing so plentifully, and nothing more curiously interwoven with every other substance, as the nerves; and so amazingly quick is their sensation, that the very instant a single nerve, even the smallest and remotest in the system, is affected, the soul, or the common sensorium, is sensible of the identical part so affected. ”

“ Neither nerves nor nervousness are words to be found in the Bible or Shakespeare. The latter uses the word nerve at least seven times in the sense of sinewy. Nervy, which is obsolete, he employs as full of nerves, sinewy, strong. ”

“ Excepting the great sympathetic nerve, the nervous fibres themselves are, as is well known, of two classes—those that gather the impressions of external things and convey them to the nerve-centres, and those that transmit the dictates of the will from within outwardly. ”

“ For it is to be observed that, while the sensations conveyed by the healthy nerve are correct in the indications which they afford to the percipient brain, the indications given by pain are vague and untrustworthy, and often seriously misleading. Not to speak of the nerves of special sense, or of the fibres which convey the sensations of muscular movement, even the nerves of common sensation do carry to the internal perception, in health, a distinct impression of the well-being of the organs to which they are distributed. ”

“ But the traditional view not only holds that pleasure and pain are inseparable attributes of other sensations, but that they are inverse and excluding complements of each other; that they are two ends or polar aspects of a single phenomenon. One of the most conclusive tests of nerve functions is that, when their terminals are electrically stimulated, each responds with its proper sensation. ”

“ Cut a nerve, and the evidence of paralysis, or of insensibility, is the same in the two cases; apply pressure to the brain, or administer a narcotic, and the signs of intelligence disappear in the one as in the other. ”

“ Nerve-pains describe the length of the nerve. Such localizations as those of vertical, frontal, or occipital headache of intracranial origin force us to conclude that parts which are neighbors, whether inner or outer, may possess by mere virtue of that fact a common peculiarity of feeling, a respect in which their sensations agree, and which serves as a token of their proximity. These local colorings are, moreover, so strong that we cognize them as the same, throughout all contrasts of sensible quality in the accompanying perception. Cold and heat are wide as the poles asunder ”

“ Let us to-day, in the first place, study more carefully than we have yet done what occurs in a nerve.
A nerve, like a muscle, is composed of living matter, and this living matter, like all living matter, is irritable ”

“ One of the great gains of the century, says Sir Michael Foster, from whom we have already quoted, is in our insight into nervous phenomena. “We now know that what takes place along a tiny thread we call a nerve fibre differs from that which takes place along its fellow threads; that differing nervous impulses travel along different nerve fibres; and that nervous and psychical events are the outcome of the clashing of nervous impulses as they sweep along the closely woven web of living threads, of which the brain is made. ”

“ For none do I know a land more delightful, than for him who, by long and severe mental activity, has exhausted the vital battery of nerve-force and disturbed the harmonious balance between the varied complex nerve-circuits. ”

“ It is true that if a nerve of sensation be divided in its course to the brain, all the parts which are supplied by it lose their sensibility; but what of that? Those parts lose their sensibility because they lose their sensitiveness; that is, because the cutting of the nerve, by impairing the body, causes the soul to abandon the organic parts supplied by that nerve. You argue that, if the soul is not present in a given part of the body, when the nerve has been injured, the soul was not present in that same part before the nerve was injured. ”

“ This simile may serve to illustrate the way in which we may obtain a similar result by irritation of various efferent nerves, the stimulation being conveyed to the nerve-center and reflected down the same efferent nerve in each case. For example, a small grain of sand in the eye will cause a person to wink violently and involuntarily. ”

“ But if we were to consider the heart itself, not its great nerve plexus, we should have to go further than the nervous system. If we had to consider the whole lambent blood-stream, we should have to descend too deep for our unpractised minds. ”

“ Microscopic researches are constantly revealing nerve-fibres, in ever-increasing profusion, which penetrate to parts seemingly the least vitalized in the organism. But, in any case, the nerves are certainly the ultimate channel of communication between the suffering part and the sentient centre. ”

“ Hence, it is convenient to say, that those outer parts possess the property of sensibility. For instance, we say that we hear with the ear, taste with the tongue, and feel with the fingers. That this is not the exact truth is proven by the fact, that whenever the nerve connecting one of these organs with the brain is severed, it at once loses its capacity for sensation.
2. Consciousness? ”

“ How does fear operate upon the body [Pg 18] to produce sickness? By paralysing the nerve centres, especially those of the vasomotor nerves, thus producing not only muscular relaxation, but capillary congestions of all kinds. ”

“ Whatever facts may be cited in its favor are due to the properties of nerve-tissue, which may be exhausted by too prolonged an excitement. Patients with neuralgias that last unremittingly for days can, however, assure us that the limits of this nerve-law are pretty widely drawn. ”

“ And we reckon this enlargement of nerve contact somehow a gain. Our bared nerves are played upon by a thousand wires. Nature, no doubt, has a method of hardening or deadening them to these shocks; but nevertheless, every person who reads is a focus for the excitements, the ills, the troubles, of all the world. ”

“ We have also observed that disturbance and imperfection of nerve-function may be produced in all persons by the action of causes operating from without upon the nervous system, and that the results may be similar in character, whether there has been too great or too little exercise of function. ”

“ Nerve Supply and Health.—We know now that when a part of the body is cut off from its connections with the central nervous system, it begins at once to be lowered in vitality and gradually tends to dissolution. ”

“ According to the Yogis, there are three principal nerve currents: one they call the Idâ, the other the Pingalâ, and the middle one the Sushumnâ, and all these are inside the spinal column. ”

“ The second, the sympathetic nerve system, consists of all the nerves of the unconscious or functional life; it therefore includes all nerves running between the brain and sympathetic or involuntary nerve centers on the one hand and the involuntary muscles on the other. ”

“ In this state and the consequent excitement of the nerves, she had almost wholly lost organic force, and received it only by transmission from those of stronger condition, principally from their eyes and the ends of the fingers. The atmosphere and nerve communications of others, said she, bring me the life which I need; they do not feel it; these effusions on which I live, would flow from them and be lost, if my nerves did not attract them; only in this way can I live. ”

“ The shock to the nerve-centers which these momentary frights give, and the nervous strain which the city dweller endures from keeping a lookout for such dangers, can not fail to impair the strength of the nervous system. Through the nerves an injurious influence is exerted upon the heart also. ”

“ How, then, do we explain those morbid phenomena which have their origin in misplaced affection, in disappointed ambition, in hatred, or in anger, and which culminate either in serious chronic maladies, or in death or suicide? They all seem to start from an impairment of the cerebro-spinal centres. The continual excitation of these by everpresent emotions determines a paralysis of the central nerve-substance, and thus affects its connections with the nerves extending out to the various organs. These nerves next degenerate by degrees, and soon the great functions are compromised. ”

“ I know nothing about nerves; but I suppose that, whether they act on the brain or the heart, the result to life is much the same if the nerves be too finely strung for life’s daily wear and tear. And this is what I mean, when I say you and Lilian will not suit. ”

“ The technical term for nervousness is psycho-neurosis—disease of the psyche. There are certain "real neuroses" such as paralysis and spinal-cord disease, which involve an organic impairment of nerve-tissue. However, as this book deals only with psychic disturbance, we shall, throughout, use the term neuroses and psycho-neuroses indiscriminately, to denote nervous or functional disorders.
To still other people nervous trouble means fear,—just terrible fear without object or meaning or reason (anxiety neuroses) ; or a definite fear of some harmless object (phobia) ”

“ We also find that the disease is often the result of some nervous strain, or over excitement The over indulgence of the passions is particularly a fruitful source of injury to the brain and spinal centres. An angry man or woman uses up more nerve energy in a few minutes than would be sufficient to serve the muscles with stimulus through hours of toil. ”

“ Nerves, surprisingly minute tubes, derived from the Brain, which gliding into the Muscles, set them on work, depress the power of sensation through the body, or returning upon any impression from without, give all needful intelligence to the soul. ”

“ It is difficult to find our way out of a maze without some faint idea of the path by which we got in. He who brings to this chapter the popular notion that nervousness is the result of worn-out nerve-cells, can hardly be expected to understand how it can be cured by a process of mental adjustment. ”

“ It is indeed incredible that any one nerve should happen to pursue a spiral course twice or thrice round the umbrella, and at the same time happen to be concentric with the course pursued by the section ”

“ In other words, the supply of nerve-force being ample, the cells will energize pleasantly: when the nerve-force is insufficiently produced, or by action is exhausted, the energizing will be attended with proportionate pain. ”

“ The nerves are like sentinels or messengers stationed in all parts of the body, whose duty it is to communicate to the seat of power—to the brain, and thus to the intellect—everything that happens to the body. ”

“ If the sensibility of these nerves is heightened, or possibly if the sensitiveness of the central terminations of the nerves is raised, then we may have sensations to which we give the name of pain. In like manner the skin is endowed with afferent nerves, distinct from those ministering to touch and to temperature, along which nervous impulses are constantly flowing. ”

“ All bodily pleasures and pains we shall conceive to be due to separate currents, rising like other sensory nervous activities at their proper nerve terminals in the body, and running thence through their appropriate paths and centres to the cortex. ”

“ A well-known but rather rare cause is the presence of some hard substance in the course of a nerve. This variety, like those already mentioned, may prove fatal in the fit, as appears from the following interesting case. ”