Sanity and insanity / by Charles Mercier.

  • Charles Arthur Mercier
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sanity and insanity / by Charles Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    52/444 page 30
    rated and invigorated. Conversely, when the nerve-currents become languid and attenuated, then the functions that they stimulate and regulate are slackened. Secretions diminish, excretion is retarded, muscular action is enfeebled, nutrition is impaired. The control which the nerve-centres exercise over the process of nutrition is subject to the same laws as determine their influence over muscular movement ; that is to say, the lowest centres control that limited part of the organism to which their nerves are distributed ; but their connection with this limited part being direct, the control they exercise is absolute, and when their influence is withdrawn by severance of the nerves or by destruction of the centre, a profound impairment of nutrition ensues, and ensues at once. The part so deprived of its nervous supply shrivels; it becomes profoundly altered in appearance ; the whole process of nutrition is retarded, enfeebled, and reduced to its lowest ebb. Parts may, and often do, even die and slough away. If the injury occurs while the body is growing, the growth of the part is retarded or altogether arrested, and that side remains for the rest of life smaller than the other. If the influence of an intermediate centre is withdrawn, the effect on nutrition is different. These centres are less directly connected with the periphery than the lowest, and have,'therefore, a less direct influence on nutrition. More- over, if they are destroyed, there still remain the centres below them, which can still perform some part in regulating the nutrition of the region supplied by them, although they will perform their part less efficiently than before, and their manner of doing so will be altered by the loss of the regulating influence of their superior centre. Each intermediate centre, while less directly actuating the nutrition of the region that it controls, will yet, as in the case of movement, regulate a much larger share of the whole body than an inferior centre. When, therefore, an intermediate tract is destroyed, the effect on nutrition is not at once discernible, but after a time it becomes apparent, and is then found to affect a large area
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image