The brain
--One of the readiest roads to the brain is through the lu gs. You may reach the brain in a minute with chloroform, for example.
The power of this drug is something marvellous.
When under its influence, a man may have his limb cut off without any sensation, whatever; and even when he recovers from the artificial trance, he may still have neither pain nor uneasiness.
Why?--Have you ever seen a person after a fit of epilepsy?
After a fit of that kind, people have no remembrance of anything done to them during the fit. During the epileptic paroxysm the brain is all but completely torpid.
The same thing happens after the anæsthetic sleep of chloroform.
In neither case can a man remember what he never felt.
But mark what may happen after amputation performed on a patient under chloroform.
The same man who felt no pain in the stump, either during or after the operation, may continue many successive months to be attacked with the identical local symptoms for which his limb was removed, at the hour of the day or night when he was wont to suffer martyrdom before its removal.
And more than this, if seized by his old enemy during sleep, he may wake exclaiming, ‘"O, my leg, my leg!
it pains me the same as when it was on!"’ More curious still, he may tell you he can, so far as his feelings are concerned, actually move the foot of the amputated limb.
What do these facts prove?
They prove: 1.
That the brain is the source of all motion and all sensation, morbid or sane; they prove inversely, 2.
That the brain is the source of rest and remission, sleep included; they further prove, 3.
That the brain is the source of all paroxysmal recurrence, whether the more prominent systems be general or local.--
London Medical Practice. 
