The tree of life, or, Human degeneracy : its nature and remedy, as based on the elevating principle of orthopathy / by Isaac Jennings.

  • Jennings, Isaac, active 1847-1860.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The tree of life, or, Human degeneracy : its nature and remedy, as based on the elevating principle of orthopathy / by Isaac Jennings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    107/298
    fectly controlled and regular, whether strong or feeble, and if there is no muscular power to be controlled the second set of nerves is thereby rendered nugatory, whether they have force or not. If the third set of nerves, whose office is to enforce obedience to governmental orders, loses its power to act, the arm may remain at rest or move at its own option ; the will can have no control over it until its enforcing agency is recovered. If the fourth set of nerves is paralyzed, the arm may be pricked, pinched or cut, and it will not perceive it. If the fifth set of nerves, the telegraphic ones, are dis- severed or rendered powerless, and the communication be- tween the arm and brain thereby suspended, although the arm may have a sensibility of its own, a perception of injury that is being inflicted upon it, and manifest a sense of this injury by wincing or twitching, this unfortunate condition of the arm will not be understood at the fountain-head of power, and means put in operation for relief, unless knowledge is conveyed through the medium of vision. According to this view of our subject, there must be in the whole system many separate sources of the life-giving and life-sustaining prin- ciple ; but the properties of all the forces supplied by the separate fountains are probably alike, the difference in the results of their action depending on difference of structure in the machinery severally employed. The rudimental ma- terial from which the vital forces are wrought is deposited at the commencement of life, as has been already stated, in the lower brain, spinal marrow, visceral ganglia and ganglia generally; for the nerves are, many of them, convoluted or wound up on themselves at convenient distances, forming little medullary masses like brain, and doubtless serve as repositories of power where it may be in readiness for draft as circumstances may require. These ganglia are the largest and most numerous in the vicinity of the most important or- gans. The elaborating and recruiting faculty situated at the fountain-heads of power, at the origin of the nerves, is very