Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian.

  • Bastian, H. Charlton.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    62/762 (page 44)
    3. In other nerve cells, furnished with many ramifying processes, one long simple process maybe seen (figs. 13, a, 14), which is occasionally traceable into direct continuity with the entire axis cylinder of a nerve fibre (Deiters). This mode of union is now generally admitted to exist, and it is not improbable that nerves so arising are, usually at least, outgoing fibres. Whilst this view cannot he defi- nitely verified, it is a fact that such processes have been found principally in the spinal cord in connection with the nerve cells of the anterior, or motor, regions of its grey matter. There is thus some ground for believing that ingoing fibres, in the majority of cases, swell in the posterior spinal ganglia and their analogues into nerve cells (fig. 10); that within the larger nerve centres these fibres, which convey ingoing currents, break up into a pencil of ultimate fibrils, and that these ultimate fibrils may be partly in structural continuity with the neuroglia, and partly with the radicles of a much branched nerve process (fig. 12), the divisions of which unite (like the radicles of a vein), till they are gathered into one or more branches directly continuous with the substance of the nerve cell. Such arrangements may suffice to break the force of Ingoing Cur- rents as they impinge upon highly excitable centres ; or their diffusion therein may thus be facilitated, and as a con- sequence they may be enabled to come into relation with the ultimate ramifications of processes pertaining to several cells. On the other hand, there is ground for believing that Outgoing Currents leave the cells of the spinal motor centres by undivided processes, which are directly con- tinuous with the axis-hands of dark bordered nerve fibres. Should these suppositions be correct as to the mode in which currents impinge upon the sensory side, and subsequently issue from the motor side of a nerve centre,