A treatise on the use of the sympathetic nerve and its ganglions : with their influence on various diseases of the abdominal and pelvic viscera.

  • Procter, Thomas Benjamin, 1800-1872.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the use of the sympathetic nerve and its ganglions : with their influence on various diseases of the abdominal and pelvic viscera. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/80 (page 1)
    A TREATISE, ETC. ETC. I.—DEFINITION OF THE TERM. In the name which the sympathetic nerve bears, we have perhaps one of the best proofs of the total ignorance which has existed, and, I am bound to add, does now exist, as to its functions and nature. At this we cannot feel surprised when we call to mind the views which have until a very late period prevailed even amongst the best anatomists and physiologists. Ignorant as our predecessors were of the functions of nearly all the nerves of the body, we cannot be surprised that they should have thought that it was a nerve of the brain, proceeding principally from the sixth, and the second division of the fifth, nerves, thence passing through the carotid foramen, descending with the nervLis vagus down the neck to its divisions to the heart, and then, as the intercostal, to the viscera. They were aware that the nerves were the only organs capable of conveying the sympathies from one part of the human frame to another, and