Identifier: plainhometalkabo00foot (find matches)
Title: Plain home talk about the human system--the habits of men and women--the cause and prevention of disease--our sexual relations and social natures
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Foote. Edward B(liss), 1829-1906. (from old catalog)
Subjects: Medicine, Popular Marriage
Publisher: New York : Murray Hill publishing company (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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hough written sev- 0r wasting of the tissues of one side of theeral years ago, they stand the face, from nervous disease,test of scientific study as well as professional experience; but since wehave come to understand the greatness of the fact of the dependence fornutrition of every bodily cell upon its supply of nerve-stimulus, whatwonder that there is a disposition to bring more and more all wastingdiseases in the category of nervous diseases. This influence of the nervous system is called trophic, from a Greekroot meaning to nurse or feed, and if the body-tissues cannot feed andreconstruct themselves from the blood so generously distributed withintheir reach, without being coaxed to do so by some nerve-influence,then that is well named trophic or mother-nurse influence. There arewell-recognized nervous diseases in which some part becomes atrophied—starved out—because its neurons are fading, still fading. The bestknown cases, though fortunately not common, are seen in the living
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SCROFULA. 569 skeletons, which are cases of •• wasting palsy/ or progressive mus-cular atrophy. In them the gradually wasting muscles indicate that aprocess of atrophy has begun in the neurons of the nerve-roots of thespinal column, hut this sort of wasting may be localized instead of gen-eral, and only affect one arm, or a small portion of the face in the domainof one nerve, and, knowing of such cases, the question naturally ariseswhether in every instance of wasting disease, even though, as in phthisis,there be an invasion of microbes to hurry along the consumption oftissue, the real cause may not be in a shortage of the trophic nerve-energy, which the cells need to enable them to keep well fed, and cap-able of warding off invaders. It is admitted that the Koch bacilli cannottake up their abode except in soil prepared for them, and now the ques-tion arises whether this acceptable soil means a particular (abnormal,of course) state of the blood, or a deficiency of trophic nerve-in

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