Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837 edition. Excerpt: ... Fig. 3, in Plate I., Plan IV., represents the simplest form of the system of excitor and motor nerves. Fig. 2 and 3, Plan IV., represents more distant arrangements of the same kind. 41. I think I may regard the proof as quite complete, that the principle formerly designated the vis nervosa, and that which operates in producing that series of actions, which have been designated instinctive, automatic, sympathetic, &c., but which I propose to designate excito-motory, are one and the same. The incident, retrograde, and reflected courses, and the combined forms, in which it operates, are at variance with the laws of its operation, deduced from the facts formerly known, by Prof. Miiller, and afford the type of the extensive series of physiological, pathological, and therapeutic phenomena to which I have alluded. 42. The experimental fact noticed, 20, and represented, Plate L, Plan II., Fig. 4, gives the type of all those physiological phenomena in which the excito-motory property acts, first in an incident, and then in retrograde and reflex directions, and in combined modes, as we observe in the excited acts of ingestion and expulsion, and in the action of the orifices and sphincters. 43. The same fact represents the effects of dentition. The experiment detailed, $ 17, and represented Plate I., Plan II., Fig. 3, affords us the type of traumatic tetanus. 44. The therapeutics of agents which operate through the excitomotory system are still nearly unknown, and require a careful investigation. Strychnine, besides acting on the general excito-motory system, is apt to affect the larynx1; cantharidine, the cervix vesicae, &c. 1 See the Lancet for November 8th, 1834. 45. This brief view of the excito-motory system, appears to me to...