'On the Pathology of Convulsions' by Sir J. R. Reynolds

Reprint requests to: German E. Berrios, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital (Box 189), Hills Road, Cambridge, UK, CB2 2QQ. E-mail: geb11@cam.ac.uk

Marneros, A. et al. (eds) (1991), Negative versus positive Schizophrenia (Heidelberg: Springer).

Zubin, J. (1985), 'Negative symptoms: are they indigenous to schizophrenia ?' Schizophrenia Bulletin, xi, 461-9.

Berrios, G.E. (1985), 'Positive and negative symptoms and Jackson'. Archives of General Psychiatry, xlii, 95-7.

Berrios, G.E. (1991), 'Positive and negative signals: a conceptual history '. In Marneros, A. et al. (eds) (1991), Negative versus positive Schizophrenia (Heidelberg: Springer), 8-27.

The fashion of positive-negative symptoms has now been replaced by another fashion: symptom-factors (Liddle, P. F. (1987), 'The symptoms of chronic schizophrenia: a re-examination of the positive-negative distinction '. British Journal of Psychiatry, cli, 145-51).

See: Berrios, 1985.

Reynolds, J.R. (1861), Epilepsy: its Symptoms, Treatment and Relation to other Convulsive Diseases (London: John Churchill).

Reynolds, J. R. (ed.) (1870), A System of Medicine. 5 Vols ( London: Macmillan (first edition, 1866)).

p.483, in Reynolds, J.R. (1869), 'Paralysis, and other disorders of motion and sensation, dependent on idea'. Lancet, ii, 483-5.

Personal communication (25 May 1990) by the late Dr MacDonald Critchley, CBE.

Anonymous (1896), 'A Brief Sketch of the Life of Sir John Russell Reynolds'. In Reynolds, J. R. , Essays and Addresses, edited by Frances Russell Reynolds (London: Macmillan ), vii-xxi.

Reynolds, J.R. (1858), 'On the pathology of convulsions, with especial reference to those of children'. The Liverpool Medico-Chirurgical Journal, ii, 1-14.

Wheeler, L.R. (1939), Vitalism. Its History and Validity ( London: Witherby).

Leff, A. (1991), 'Thomas Laycock and the cerebral reflex: a function arising from and pointing to the unity of nature'. History of Psychiatry, ii, 385-407.

Manuel, D.E. (1980), 'Marshall Hall FRS (1790-1857). A conspectus of his life and work'. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, xxxv, 135-66.

Reynolds defines 'vital action' thus: 'there are physical and chemical properties in the living tissues; but over and above these are the vital, such as contractility, sensibility, and the like, which cannot be expressed in either physical or chemical terms. We may analyse the product of vital acts, and state their material result in chemical terms; but in so doing we have not exhausted the subject, there remains the vital property, as yet an unreduced fact of natural science.' This is clear enough: at this early stage of his career Reynolds was a 'vitalist'.

Riese, W. (1956), 'The sources of Jacksonian neurology'. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, cxxiv, 125-34

; Engelhardt, H.T. (1975), 'J. H. Jackson and the mind-body relationship '. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, xlix, 137-51

; Kennard, C. and Swash, M. (eds) (1989), Hierarchies in Neurology. A Reappraisal of a Jacksonian Concept (London: Springer).