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

  • Brown-Séquard, Charles-Edouard, 1817-1894.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

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.

    23/140 (page 11)
    9. J. Reid has found, that if the four nerves uniting the spinal cord to the posterior limbs are cut across on both sides, in frogs, and if a galvanic current is applied every day to the pal- sied limbs on one side, these galvanized limbs retain their natural dimensions, while the palsied limbs not galvanised become atrophied. I have found:—1. That if, instead of cutting only the four cerebro-spinal nerves of the posterior limbs, I divide also the branches of the sympathetic nerve which unite with them, the same results are obtained as in Reid's experiment. 2. That if a like experiment is performed on dogs, guinea-pigs, rabbits and pigeons, the same results are found. 3. That if after atrophy has taken place in the limb of a mammal or a pigeon, a galvanic current is applied, every day, during several weeks, the atrophy diminishes little by little and the limb at length becomes as large as a sound limb. This happens although there is no return of vital property in the divided nerves. 4. That if the application of galvanism is made on the palsied limbs of very young animals, and continued every day until they have arrived at adult age, these limbs are then found to have grown as much, in every re- spect, as the sound limbs. In addition to these facts I have to state that in cases of lead palsy, in which the extensor muscles, as far as I have been able to judge, were completely destroyed and replaced by fibrous tissue, I have seen muscles created by galvanism and becoming as strong as they are in healthy men. In a case, which I published two years ago, (Gaz. M^d. de Paris, 1850, t. v. p. 169,) I have found that an increase of five centimetres in circumference took place in the superior part of the leg of a young gentleman, under the influence of gal- vanism, applied three quarters of an hour each day for six days. In all the facts before related, galvanism acts by two ways : the one is that it exercises the muscles, and increase in conse- quence their nutrition ; the other is that it produces directly some of the chemical changes which constitute nutrition. The atrophy, which happens in paralyzed muscles, takes place mostly because they remain without exercise, and partly because when nervous action is deficient the respiration of the muscles is not carried on as well as when the nervous system acts upon