Manual of general, descriptive, and pathological anatomy (Volume 3).

  • Meckel, J. F. (Johann Friedrich), 1781-1833.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of general, descriptive, and pathological anatomy (Volume 3). 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.)

    10/554
    6th. All the spinal nerves communicate together very constantly by one or several larger or smaller branches which they give off soon after leaving the vertebral canal, and which anastomose with those analogous. The anastomosing branches usually arise from the anterior part of the nerves, or belong only to their anterior branches, and go before the transverse processes on the sides of the bodies of the vertebrae. The brachial, lumbar, and sacral plexuses, are formed entirely in this man- ner ; their arrangement, however, differs from that usually seen, being more complex, since the anastomosing branches produce others which anastomose several times with those near. Nerves composed of fila- ments from several trunks uf different origins, tuise hum these points of union whether single or multiple. One or more anastomosing branches communicate at the same time with the branches of the ganglionnary system in the limiting gan- glions. Besides these anterior anastomosing branches which form along the vertebral column, a series of plexuses, corresponding in number to that of the vertebras, the posterior branches also anastomose in an analogous manner, especially at the upper region of the neck, although this ar- rangement is less general posteriorly than anteriorly. ARTICLE FIRST. DORSAL NERVES. § 1811. The dorsal, thoracic, costal, or intercostal nerves (JV. iho- racici, s. dorsales, s. costales, s. intercostales) are like the dorsal ver- tebras, twelve in number. Some anatomists, however, as Haller,(l) count only eleven, and annex to the lumbar nerves that usually re- garded as the twelfth. We shall examine only the eleven inferior nerves, as it is more convenient to describe the first with the four inferior cervical nerves. The general characters of these nerves are as follow: 1st. They make part of the smaller nerves of the spinal marrow, and are particularly smaller than the inferior cervical, the lumbar and the superior sacral nerves. 2d Most of them, especially the inferior, are those spinal nerves which arise farthest from each other. Still the superior are nearer to each other than the superior cervical nerves are 3d. Most of them communicate only by intermediate filaments in the vertebral canal. Still we have often found between the first and second pairs, as between the second and third, a filament, proceeding obliquely from above downward, and from within outward, from the su- (1) El. phys., lib. x. not. 38.