Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Structure and functions of the brain and spinal cord. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![speaking', and will therefore only repeat that this points stronglv to the assumption that the nerve cells, which are the more delicate and more easily tired elements of the apparatus under consideration, are the special instruments necessary for the produc- tion of a rhvthm. But there are (jther facts to which I sliall have occasion to refer in greater detail l^efore the present series of lectures is terminated. I allude to the well-known observations of Stirling and others, which go to show that the nerve or ganghonic cells in the spinal cord of a frog (and the same may be added for manunals) are capable of storing up and accumulatino- excitatorv chancres which mav not be enough to cause a discharge of the whole a})])aratus. l)ut which neveilheless. bv summing themseh^es up too-ether in the nerve cell, ultimatelv o-et headwav enouo-h to lead the nerA'e centre to liberate its enero'v. and if (as was the case in Mr. Tvomanes experi- ments) the stunuli employed are sui^maximal and constantly applied, it is clear that we may have been dealing Avith a provision of the same nature, and consequently have recorded a similar result. Quite recently, however, it has been suggested, on the strength of carefully performed experiments. that the rhythmical variations which can be de- tected in the contractions of the muscles in the hio-her animals, when thrown into action bv their](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21218262_0073.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
