An experimental investigation of the central motor innervation of the larynx / by Felix Semon and Victor Horsley.

  • Semon, Sir Felix, (1849-1921)
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An experimental investigation of the central motor innervation of the larynx / by Felix Semon and Victor Horsley. 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.

    3/32 (page 187)
    VIII. An Experimental Investigation of the Central Motor Innervation of the Larynx. By Felix Semon, M.D., F.R.C.P., and Victor Horsley, B.S., F.B.S. [From the Laboratory of the Broum Institution.) Received June 17,—Read June 19, 1890. [Plates 31, 32.] Part I.—Excitation-experiments. a. Introduction. In the course of observations dealing with the physiology of tbe motor innervation of the larynx, the results of which were embodied in a paper recently presented by one of us (F. S.) to the Royal Society,* it was shown that the central innervation of the larynx played a much more important rdle in the function of respiration than had previously been accorded to it. More especially it was shown that certain nerve- centres were constantly at work in maintaining a reflex-tonus of the abductor muscles (posterior crico-arytsenoids) indispensable for the mechanism of quiet respiration in Man. In 1880, 1881 and 1883t it had been shown by one of us (F. S.) that these same muscles (the abductors) were more liable to degenerative changes in cases of organic disease of the motor nerves of the larynx from the medulla oblongata downwards, and at the same time that functional disorders of the laryngeal motor apparatus almost exclu- sively affected their antagonists, the adductors. The explanation of all these different phenomena presented great difficulties, and, although light was thrown upon them in very various and unlooked-for ways, it soon became evident that neither clinical and pathological observations in Man alone, nor experiments upon the peripheral nerve- mechanism of animals, would suffice to solve all the questions here involved. Now, the fact just mentioned—viz., that in functional disorders (e.g., hysterical aphonia) those motor laryngeal nerve-fibres only which subserve the volitionary func- tion of the larynx (i.e., phonation) ordinarily suffer, whilst, on the other hand, in * “ On the Position of the Vocal Cords in Quiet Respiration in Man, and. on the Reflex-tonus of their Abductor Muscles.” ‘Roy. Soc. Proc.,’ 1890 (vol. 48, p. 403). t (a) Foot note in German Edition of Morell Mackenzie’s ‘ Diseases of the Throat and Nose,’ vol. 1, p. 574. (5) ‘Archives of Laryngology,’ July, 1881. (c) ‘Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift,’ No. 46, et seq., 1883.