Experimental researches applied to physiology and pathology / By e. Brown-Séquard.

  • Brown-Séquard, Charles-Edouard, 1817-1894.
Date:
1853
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experimental researches applied to physiology and pathology / By e. Brown-Séquard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    pig or pigeon, the palsied limb continues to grow in length, but it grows only very little, if at all, in thickness. When the experiment is made on all the nerves of the wing in a very young pigeon, it is also found that the wing grows in length, but very little in breadth or in thickness. The secretion of quills takes place equally as well in the palsied limb as in the other. The difference in all these cases between the length of the sound and that of the palsied limb or wing is never very consi- derable ; nevertheless the length of the healthy parts is greater than that of the paralysed parts. 4. I have found that burns, wounds and ulcerations existing in parts palsied in consequence of the section of their cerebro- spinal nerves, are cured as quickly and as well as those in sound parts. 5. Atrophy is a constant consequence of the section of the nerves of a limb. I have found that it supervenes not only in the muscles and the bones, as J. Reid has discovered, but also in the skin, which becomes evidently thinner. 6. Krimer asserts that after the section of the nerves of a limb in Mammals, the venous blood is of a bright red eolor like the arterial blood. (Physiologische Untersuchungen, Leipzig, 1820, p. 138 exp. 1, and p. 152 exp. 9.) . Long before the publication of Krimer, Arnemann had de- clared that the blood appeared darker than usual in a limb on which all the nerves had been cut. (Versuche Uber die Regera- tion an lebenden thieren, Gottingen, 1786, t. i., p. 48.) Longet (Traite de Physiologie, Paris, 1850? t. ii., B. p. 92,) says that he has seen the venous blood retaining its ordinary color even three days after the section of the nerves of the anterior limb in dogs. Who is right—Krimer, Arnemann or Longet ? Neither of them is perfectly right. The assertion of Arnemann is entirely incorrect. By experiments made on dogs, rabbits, guinea- pigs and pigeons, I have found that the venous blood in palsied limbs is evidently less black than it is in sound limbs. But it is not true to say that venous and arterial blood in paralysed limbs have the same color. It is always very easy to distinguish one from the other. The transformation of the arterial blood into venous is not so