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.

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    all the sphincters and muscles ol the body through the medulla oblongata and the medulla spinalis, and in fact that there is scarcely an organ m the human body that is not now Ljiozih to have ^ moving and directing power; is it then probable or even possible that so important a system as the arterial should he without such a controlling and directing power? Acknowledging that it is not, as every one must necessarily do, and coupling this with the fact that there is a large and evidently important system of nerves exclusively surrounding, embracing, and running into the coats of the arterial system, of which we know little or nothing and when we see the remarkable way in which anatomy bears out this opinion, I would venture to predict that so surely as anatomy led Sir C. Bell on step by step to his admirable, lucid, and conclusive arrangement of the other nervous systems, so surely does anatomy point out to us most distinctly the functions of this nervous system ; and doubtless the time will arriv^e when it will be capable of demonstration : difficult as I confess it now appears to be, from its peculiar situation in the body, and from its apparent total want of functional connection with the other systems. It is singular that up to this period no author has sufhciently pointed out the remarkable difference in appearance and structure * The functions of this system are known only by negatives : we have as- certained that they have nothing to do with volition, nor with sensation, nor with “ respiration, nor with expression, nor with sound and speech. We are left tliere- “ fore to the conjecture that the sympathetic or the ganglionic system of nerves, according to Bichat, are for those thousand secret operations of a living body which may be called constitutional. Circulation, secretion, and absorption are operations which simultaneously aflect the entire frame.”—Sir C. Bell on the Nerves, p. 11.