De resolutione theses

I.

Resolution, paralysis, paresis, paraplegia, paraplexia, and hemiplegia signify almost the same thing. The difference lies chiefly in this: that the first three denote, among authors, any resolution of one or several parts, while the latter sometimes denote only that which succeeds apoplexy.

II.

Indeed, the aforementioned names are taken in two ways. Most often, they are used to express a symptom, namely the resolution of animal functions—that is, of motion, or of sensation, or of both together. Sometimes, however, they are used for the disease which exists as the cause of said lesions.

III.

Moreover, Resolution in general, when taken as a disease, is a certain defective disposition of the brain, or of the spinal cord, or of the nerves, by which the passage or transmission of the faculty and of the animal spirits from the brain through the nerves to the parts of the body is primarily impeded.

IV.

For we do not call an affection of the limbs, in which their sensation and motion has perished because the faculty of the brain is near extinction or the animal spirits have failed, a paralysis, but rather when that influx of the faculty or of the spirits is prohibited.

V.

Furthermore, some paralysis is general, and some is particular, as Galen relates in Book 3 of De Locis Affectis, chapter 10. That which happens to all limbs below the chin is called general. It is said to be particular when either one side or another, or only one or several limbs, are deprived of motion.

VI.

The cause of this diversity is that the affection prohibiting the influx of the faculty or of the spirits does not always reside in one place.

VII.

And indeed, paralysis is easily diagnosed from the recited symptoms, to which, however, others perhaps may be added: such as that the reso-