CEREBRAL BLOOD FLOW PRECEDING AND ACCOMPANYING EPILEPTIC SEIZURES IN MAN

Abstract

That epileptic seizures are caused by cerebral anemia consequent to a cerebral vascular spasm is a widely accepted and plausible hypothesis. It is, moreover, one that bears the respectability of age. In 1861 Reynolds1in his book on epilepsy wrote: M. Bernard has shown that after division of the sympathetic nerve in the neck there is an elevation of temperature and vascularity, not only in the superficial parts of the head, but in the cranial cavity and the cerebral substance itself. Again, Donders and Van der Beke Callenfells have proved that irritation of these nerves causes contraction in the arteries of the pia mater; and the same observers, together with Dr. Brown-Sequard, have demonstrated that arteries of the brain-meninges contract through reflex stimulation; the centre of such reflextion being the medulla oblongata. Now, it has been shown experimentally by Astley Cooper, that compression of the brain will induce loss