Physiological therapeutics : a new theory / by Thomas W. Poole.

  • Poole, Thomas W.
Date:
1879
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiological therapeutics : a new theory / by Thomas W. Poole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    These latter are known to contain the vaso-motor nerves, of the stomach ;* and as besides these, the sympathetic nerve suppHes the abdominal viscera with motor and sensitive nerves, the stomach doubtless receives a share of these latter nerves also from the same source. 261. We now proce'ed to consider the dependence, or otherwise, of the irregular contractions of these viscera, on nervous agency. Dr. Dalton states that after division of the pneumogastric nerves, food and drink are swallowed as before, but accumulate in the lower and middle part of the oesophagus,, and owing to the paralysis of this canal, they are not conveyed into the stomach, and in a few moments are suddenly rejected by a peculiar kind of regurgitation.-f' Now, if the muscular walls of the oesophagus were paralyzed, as Dr. Dalton, and others, assume, it would be a mere flaccid tube, and could neither offer resistance to the passage of food and drink, nor could these be suddenly rejected, as appears to be the case. The symptoms recorded point rather to constriction of the lower end of the oesophagus, resulting from the withdrawal of nerve-force and the consequent unopposed contraction of the muscular fibres con- cerned : just as in the extinguishment of nerve-force by death, other tubes, including the arteries, lacteals and intestines pass into a state of contraction.:}: Indeed, the paralysis in all these cases^ appears to be that of nerve-force, and not of muscular fibre. 262. Dr. J. Reid reports the section of the vagi in a rabbit, which had been kept fasting for sixteen hours previously, and was then allowed to eat parsley. It died in five hours. The oesophagus was found full, and the stomach also, but not distended. A good deal of the parsley had passed into the trachea and bronchial tubes, and even into the minute air cells of the lungs. || This experiment is quoted as a proof of the paralysis of the muscular walls of these organs., But the undilated stomach, under the circumstances, points rather to a contracted state of its muscular walls, which bear witness to the characteristic power of muscular fibre, when its antagonizing nerve-force is withdrawn. 263. Dr. Carpenter refers to this subject by stating that if the pneumogastric be divided in the rabbit on each side, above the oesophageal plexus, but below the pharyngeal branches, and the animal be then fed, the food is delayed in the oesophagus, which becomes greatly distended.§ That is to say, the upper part of this tube, where the motor nerves are still intact, behaves in a normal manner, on the entrance of food ; while in its lower part, which has been deprived of the influence of nervous agency, and nerve-force is *Dr. L. Brunton, Hand-book for the Phys. Labor., p. 493. t Physiology, p. 473. :3:Dr. Carpenter's Physiology, pp. 454, 334. |i Drs. Todd and Bowman's Phys. Anat., p. 491. §Phys.,p. 404.