On secondary and tertiary degenerations in the spinal cord of the dog : a preliminary communication / by Charles S. Sherrington.

  • Charles Scott Sherrington
Date:
[1885]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On secondary and tertiary degenerations in the spinal cord of the dog : a preliminary communication / by Charles S. Sherrington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    the cord of a dog killed 268 days after a large lesion of the anterior part of one hemisphere, including much of the cord-area/' I find the same appearances though of slighter extent. In the cord of a dog from whom a huge portion of the cortex of both hemispheres had been removed in six operations, the first performed 733 days before death, the cord-areas being probably injured twenty-one months before death, the same appearances are well marked. Here they become more and more extensive in passing from the upper cervical region to the upper sacral; in the lower sacral region they are not so advanced. In the cervical region the fibres involved lie chiefly in the median part of the anterior columns—especially about the bottom of the anterior median fissure. Passing distally along the dorsal region, many fibres in the posterior columns are affected as well, and more and more numerously the more distal lies the level of the section. Both Goll's and Burdach's columns are attacked, but especially the latter; and the latter most in its portion adjoining the grey cornu. At some levels Burdach's column contains few unaffected fibres. In the lower dorsal, the lumbar, and the sacral regions the degenerated fibres occur in the posterior nerve- roots, but in the roots are relatively to sound fibres not nearly so numerous as in the posterior columns; they are most frequent in the more ventral bundles of that portion of the posterior root which does not pass at once into the grey cornu. The degenerated fibres are also to be found sparsely scattered through the lateral columns, and among those fibres which traverse the scar left by the degenerated pyramidal tracts. Nowhere have I found them in the direct cerebellar tracts, or in the anterior nerve-roots; an evidence that the change respects certain fibre-systems. In the case mentioned above, where the extent of the change was slight, the fibres involved lay exclusively around the bottom of the anterior fissure, and in a portion of Burdach's column next the grey matter. Of points in the histology of the tertiary degeneration I hope to speak in a more complete description than the present. It seems however worthy of remark here that, in the same way that the speedy degeneration of the crossed pyramidal tract of the dog, visible throughout the cord to the 2nd lumbar root in nine days after cortical lesion, is accompanied by considerable sclerosis and leaves a fibrous scar, whereas the later and more chronic degeneration of the re-crossed pyramidal tract is accompanied by far less sclerosis, and leaves practically no fibrous scar; so in its turn is the yet more tardy and far more chronic tertiary degeneration unaccompanied by any sclerosis;
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