Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Essays / by James Wilkes [and] William Hammond. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![nerves, anti that they are as rare upon the nerves instrumental to voluntary motion, as they are constant and numerous in parts whose motions are independent of our volitions, we have the firmest <TOunds of belief that ganglia on the latter are placed as checks to the powers of volition.”* a. d. 1772—Before Johnstone’s doctrine of the Ganglions ap- peared in the Phil. Trans., Lancisi,+ Winslow,! Gorter,1T Le Cat,§ Tarin,|| Meckel,** and Zinntt had promulgated different opinions on this subject; but Haase wrote his Treatise on the Ganglia after- wards, and assigned to them an office merely mechanical, stating their use to be that the nerves might diverge in them, and changing their direction, disperse to different parts. He thought the pulpy substance of the ganglia analogous to, and fulfilling the office of cellular membrane.!! He denies that they facilitate the distribution of vessels to nerves, or that their use is to unite the branches of nerves. a. d. 1778—Tissot first uniquivocally admitted the doctrines of Johnstone. “ M. Johnstone, celebre Medecin Anglois, s’en est occupe dans un ouvrage fort bien-fait; son systeme est tres inge- nieux, et merite d’etre connu. II part d’un principe tr£s vrai, deja indique plus haut; pour parvenir, dit-il, a la connoissance des gang- lions, examinons quelles sont les fonctions et les caracteres des parties auxquelles se distribuent les nerfs qui en partent; et en faisant cet examen, il trouve que ce sont celles dont lesmouvemens sont absolu- ment independans de la volonte, et dont les fonctions sont les plus importantes dans la machine humaine, le cceur et les visceres abdo- minaux; cette independance dans les mouvemens ne dependant point des fibres musculaires qui paroissent de meme nature dans ces parties que dans les autres, elle ne peut dependre que des nerfs ; mais ces nerfs n'ont de caractere distinctif que les ganglions; ne peut-on done pas en conclure, que les ganglions sont Vorgane dont la nature se sert pour rendre le mouvement du cceur et des intestins ab- solument independant de la volonte.&c. A. d. 1779—Scarpa, agreeing with the opinions of Meckel and Zinn, imputes a triple use to the ganglia; viz., that of separating, mixing, and again collecting the nervous branches. He compares the intimate arrangement of the filaments in a ganglion to a rope, the component threads of which are untwisted and teased out at any particular point.§§ * 1. C., p. 22. + Diss. Epistolaris—Rom®, 1718. Morgagni, Adversaria Anatomica, No. 5, p. ] 10. t Traite des Nerfs, t 2, sec. 364, p. 595. H Chirurgia repurgata, sec. 799 et seq. i Dis sur la sensibilite, etc., art 3. || L’Encyclopsedie Fr, Au mot Ganglion. ** Memoires de Berlin, Pour 1749. ++ Idem, Pour 1753. tt Primus gangliorum usus est ut nervuli in iis a se recedant. Alia gangliorum' utilitas est ut nervi mutata directione ad proximas variis e regionibus positas partes dividantur He Gang. Nervor., Leip., 1772. HIT Traite des Nerfs, &c., tome i., pt ii-, p. 133. Nervorum trunci, vel radices, apicem superiorem gauglii ingredientes,incipiuntdissociar. fcegregati autem, ac in plurima fila soluti, corpus ganglii latius efficiunt, atque iterum collecti mo1'10'* lnfenorem ex eo ln novos truncos coacervati egrediuntur—Scarpa, Annot. Anat,vii. JS](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21727892_0033.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
