Inaugural dissertation on the respiratory system of nerves, considered as the vehicle of general sympathy : submitted to the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh, in conformity with the rules for graduation, by authority of the Very Reverend Principal Baird, and with the sanction of the Senatus Academicus / by John R. Russell.

  • Russell, John Rutherford.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inaugural dissertation on the respiratory system of nerves, considered as the vehicle of general sympathy : submitted to the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh, in conformity with the rules for graduation, by authority of the Very Reverend Principal Baird, and with the sanction of the Senatus Academicus / by John R. Russell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    in some of the spinal nerves. The function we allude to is the power of transmitting sympathy. If onr conclusion be admitted, which we think it must, that the ganglionic nerves endow parts with sensibility only in virtue of their connexion with the cerebro-spinal, let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, such an arrangement as this. Instead of the spinal nerves leaving the spinal column disconnectedly, and proceeding in indivi- dual branches to different organs, let us miagine that the moment they left the cord they became incorporated with the ganglionic system, and diffused with it throughout all the frame; is it not evident that, if such were the case, it would be extremely difl&cult to prove that the ganghonic system was not essentially the system of sensa- tion, and yet manifestly the assertion would have been as true as under the present arrangement. But if, in one or two organs peculiarly endowed with sensibility, we could have traced nerves coming directly from the spinal cord, and found sensibility much impaired by division of these nerves, we might possibly have arrived at a just conclusion, and believed that, as in one organ where the ganglionic and spinal nerves were dis- tinct, sensation depended on the spinal nerves, so in all the organs to which the ganglionic su]jplied