Physiology and pathology of the sympathetic system of nerves / by A. Eulenburg and P. Guttmann ; tr. by A. Napier.

  • Eulenburg, Albert, 1840-1917.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiology and pathology of the sympathetic system of nerves / by A. Eulenburg and P. Guttmann ; tr. by A. Napier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    longitudinal muscle-cells of the walls of the vessels as the means through which these nerves act, though they have been demonstrated with certainty in only a few, that is, in large arteries. Here we can touch on this important matter but cursorily, as far only as it stands in immediate relation to our subject. It is true that these investigations, and the conclusions drawn from them by'Goltz, referred originally to the vaso- motor nerves distributed in the sciatic, or to those of the hinder part of the body in mammalia; but they strongly suggested a transferring of the argument to the cervical sympathetic, and such a transference has already been at- tempted by Goltz in a very positive way. The above-men- tioned fundamental experiment of Bernard, which showed that division of the sympathetic causes dilatation of the vessels of the head, and elevation of the temperature on the injured side, should, according to Goltz, be thus explained —that by means of the incision the vessel-dilating nerves are brought into a state of persistent irritation ! He ex- plained in the same way the unilateral increase of perspi- ration following division of the sympathetic in horses, and the persistent increase of the secretion of the submaxillary gland following section of the cord. Latterly, also, Claude Bernard and Brown-Sequard have been inclined, at least partly, to a similar opinion; the former, inasmuch as he admitted the existence of vaso-dilator along with vaso- constrictor fibres ; the latter, as he accepts the appearances following division of the sympathetic, usually regarded as paralytic indications, as the results of irritation. Such being the state of this question, we regarded it as our duty to repeat the fundamental experiments on the cervical sympathetic, with special reference to the subject in dispute, and in such a way as to ensure complete clearness and certainty. When we examine the older, and often very shortly described, experiments, it is found that, as a rule, too little importance is attached to the determining of the time of the occurrence of the vascular-thermic and other pheno- mena following irritation or division ; thus doubts may arise whether, in such a case as lowering of the temperature following irritation of the sympathetic, one has to do with primary phenomena, or rather with secondary phenomena brought on by exhaustion of the irritated nerve. It is clear that if we regard the increase of temperature after section of the sympathetic as the consequence of a persistent irritation,