Hygiene of nerves & mind in health and disease / August Forel ; translated from the German by Austin Aikins.

  • Auguste Forel
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hygiene of nerves & mind in health and disease / August Forel ; translated from the German by Austin Aikins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    affect the nerve, will make the muscle contract, and, on the contrary, the poison curare paralyses the motor nerve and not the muscle. The nerve which we stimulated, in the supposed case, can communicate to the muscle only that rude, uniform, or indifferent stimulus. But since every separate nerve fibril ends, as we have seen, in a dif- ferent part of the muscle, it is possible for an extra- ordinarily fine harmonious combination of stimuli of different strengths in different fibrils and bundles of fibrils to cause a correspondingly fine and harmonious combination of muscular contractions, and thus lead to harmoniously combined movements of the bones and cartilages to which the muscles are attached by sinews. When the nerve which moves the muscle of a living man or animal is severed, after a short time the whole severed end of the nerve dies, and then the muscle dies too and shrivels up. Thus we see the tremendous extent to which the muscle depends upon the nerve. 2. The Nerve and the Neurohym. From the facts described, as well as from the fact that sensory stimuli are conducted to the brain, it clearly follows that within the living nerve—really in the axis-cylin- der, or nervous process of the ganglion cell—there takes place a wave-like molecular movement, which we have called neurokym, and which is transmitted with extraordinary rapiditj^ In the case of the motor nerve the rate is about thirty metres [say one hundred feet] per second. The rapidity of trans-
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