Experimental researches, illustrative of the functional oneness, unity, and diffusion, of nervous action : in opposition to the anatomical assumption, of four sets of nerves, and a fourfold set of functions, and transmitted impressions : with a brief exposition of the philosophy of vivisection, and of sensation / by Bennet Dowler, M.D., of New-Orleans (Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia).

  • Dowler, Bennet
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experimental researches, illustrative of the functional oneness, unity, and diffusion, of nervous action : in opposition to the anatomical assumption, of four sets of nerves, and a fourfold set of functions, and transmitted impressions : with a brief exposition of the philosophy of vivisection, and of sensation / by Bennet Dowler, M.D., of New-Orleans (Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    22/34 (page 56)
    ished circulation at the origins of the afferent nerves is shown in the deficient impressibility of the nerves of the part affected. A complete stagnation, (of the capillaries,) produced complete insensibility. (Phys.) Now these facts, (and every practical physician must have seen many equally striking,) show, that the non-circulation of the blood, produces a loss of motion and sensation, rivalling in instantaneousness and com- pleteness the division of the nerves, which latter operation constitutes the experimentum crucis of neurological dynamists. Another method of suspending, temporarily, or of destroying even permanently, sensa- tion and motion, is that of anaesthesia, or the inhalation of ether and chloroform. Local anaesthesia, as that of a finger, is more explicable by the assumption of a local sensory and motory function in the part affected, than by referring the whole to tho posterior and anterior roots exclusively. In truth, as already stated, there are various methods both of exciting, and suspending muscular motions without any known causa- tive relation to the nerves. The nerve, the blood, respiration, oxygen, and the like, furnish the conditions essential to the voluntary action of the muscles—as tempera- ture, moisture, and earth, furnish the essential conditions by which the acorn becomes an oak. On the contrary, the loss of motion and sen- sation in many, if not most cases, is not preceded by any known lesion whatever, in either the motiferous or sensiferous nerves. Indeed, the pathological method of investigating the double functions of the nerves, is unfavorable to the latter hypothesis. Of the vast catalogue of nervous diseases affecting motion and sensation, each of which would be an illustrative experiment by the hand of nature, not one is founded on pathological anatomy, conformably to this hypothesis; that is to say, not one has been proved to have been invariably preceded by well marked lesions of either the posterior or anterior roots, or the sensiferous, or motiferous portions of the nervous system. For example, Tetanus, Hydrophobia, Epilepsy, Convulsions, Spasms, Palsy, etc., cannot be satisfactorily referred to lesions of either portion of this system, to which they are supposed to belong; for example, in a Palsy, with a loss of motion and sensation, neither tho motiferous nor the sensiferous roots present well marked alterations : again, in Tetanus, a disease which is taken as a type of motiferous diseases, no constant, or even frequent, morbid change has been found in the nerves called motiferous, to the exclusion of the other nerves. Dr. Carpenter, in his exposition of the functions of the spinal cord by means of what he terms pathological applications, says: The power of the whole spinal system is capable of being morbidly dimin-