An essay on the operation of poisonous agents upon the living body / by Thomas Addison and John Morgan.

  • Thomas Addison
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the operation of poisonous agents upon the living body / by Thomas Addison and John Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    essentially depend upon the medium by which it is carried into the system. As reasonably might it be presumed that at one time the sense of taste was communicated by a branch of the fifth pair of nerves, and at another time by the salivary ducts, as to entertain a belief that veins, absorbents, and nerves individually performed a function of precisely a similar nature. On the contrary, every organ in the living system is destined to perform its proper functions, and, as far as our physio- logical researches have yet extended, we are justified in assuming that no two organs in the human body are capable of perform- ing the same function, neither can two functions be performed by the same organ. It will not, for instance, be said that the sympathy between the brain and stomach is conveyed along the eighth pair of nerves at one time, and by the circulating system at another: that when vomiting occurs as a consequence of concussion of the brain, it is occasioned by nervous sympathy ; and that when morbid sensibility of the brain is