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Excerpt from On the Union of a Spinal Nerve With the Vagus Nerve It was, therefore, to be expected that the negative results, reported by Langley and others, of experiments testing the power of the vagus to regenerate itself, would be accounted for by the brevity of the time allowed for regeneration. This was actually demonstrated in Lang ley's laboratory by Tuckett,2 who found, in the rabbit, that three years after operation sutured vagi respond to stimulation almost normally. While reviewing the literature on the subject Of regeneration Of the vagus nerve, we were impressed by the comparative sluggishness in the return Of function after unions with it, a sluggishness which seems to be out Of all proportion to the length Of the nerve. At this time two possible explanations suggested themselves: (a) The small medullated fibres which occur in the vagus nerve, and which are probably its preganglionic fibres, may not grow as rapidly as large medullated fibres. (b) In the process of regeneration, fibres which are normally short may not extend beyond their normal length as rapidly as fibres whose normal length more nearly approximates that required of them in the regeneration. We have no experimental evidence in support Of the first possibility. Indeed Langley and Anderson3 state, we think, however, without sufficient justification, that small nerve fibres can much more readily unite with large ones than large ones with small. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfectio