Physiology and pathology of the sympathetic system of nerves / by A. Eulenburg and P. Guttmann ; tr. by A. Napier.

  • Eulenburg, Albert, 1840-1917.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiology and pathology of the sympathetic system of nerves / by A. Eulenburg and P. Guttmann ; tr. by A. Napier. 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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    spinal roots of the first thoracic ganglion in dogs. Besides such branches as are of uncertain origin, the trunk of the sympathetic in its whole length, as far downwards as the lumbar region, contains fibres the irritation of which accelerates and strengthens the contractions of the heart, as Budge and Donders have shown in frogs, and Y. Bezold in rabbits. Yon Bezold also regarded as excitomotor those filaments which, issuing from the thoracic and lumbar parts of the spinal marrow, pass upwards in the trunk of the sympathetic, and eventually emerge from the uppermost thoracic ganglion as Nervi cardiaci inferiores. Nevertheless this, as we now know, is not the correct view; they are rather regulating fibres, conducting impressions centripetally, and acting in a reflex way on the vagus nerve. 2. Stomach and Intestines.—Nothing is known with cer- tainty regarding the influence of the sympathetic on the movements of the stomach. The peristaltic movements of the intestines, on the other hand, though automatically excited through the parenchymal ganglia, seem capable of receiving accelerating influences from the thoracic and abdominal parts of the sympathetic system. The inhibitory nerves of peristaltic action, afterwards to be considered, appear to run in the trunk of the splanchnic nerve; at least one circum- stance favours that view,—that irritation of the splanchnic in animals arrests the movements of the intestines. The colon descendens and the rectum receive, according to Nasse,* motor fibres from the plexus surrounding the inferior mesenteric artery. 3. Urogenital Apparatus.—The movements of the bladder, the ureter, the seminal vesicles, and the uterus, are partly excited or increased by irritation of the trunk of the sympa- thetic nerve in the abdomen or of the plexuses in the abdo- minal cavity; but it is still an open question whether the originating or increasing of these movements takes place directly from the sympathetic by excitomotor fibres, or reflexively through the afferent or sensory nerves of the viscera. As regards the bladder, Budget has shown that most of its direct motor branches come from the spinal cord, from the centrum genito-spinale superius and inferius, through the sacral nerves; some also pass through the syrn- * Beitriige zur Physiologie der Darmbewegnng, Leipzig, I8fi6. f Henle's and Pfeufer's Zeitschrift fur rationelle Medicin, xxi., p. 174. Wiener med. Wochenscrift,'' 1864, No. 39-41.