The medulla oblongata in its relations with sexual disorder, and on local blood-letting as a means of treatment / by Alexander Harkin.

  • Harkin, Alexander.
Date:
[1884]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medulla oblongata in its relations with sexual disorder, and on local blood-letting as a means of treatment / by Alexander Harkin. 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.

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    not alone in the nerve centres or in the reproductive organs, but in both of them.” 1 While the existence of centres in the medulla oblongata for reflex functions, for cardio-inhibitory, for respiratory, for convul- sive and other centres, is universally recognised, their relative positions are but matters of conjecture. They have no lines of demarcation ; on the contrary, they often meet at many points, and, so to speak, overlap one another. It is thus that the normal expiratory division of the respiratory centre is connected by the closest ties with the convulsive centre. Although its existence has not so far been demonstrated, I am satisfied that a centre for the genital or reproductive functions may logically be inferred to exist in the medulla oblongata. On this point Yan der Kolk writes : “ The close relation between the medulla oblongata and the action of the genital organs is generally received by physiologists. Let it suffice to call to mind the occurrence of erection and emission in persons hanged, how the sexual action is exalted in idiopathic mania with irritation of the brain and medulla oblongata, how frequently after injuries of this part erection and emission, or perhaps impotence, is observed.” Killian succeeded in exciting movements in the uterus or tubes of pregnant guinea-pigs by irritating the medulla oblongata; and Eckard has shown that galvanic stimulation of the crura and medulla oblongata in the dog will produce erection, although a similar stimulation of the cerebellum pro- duced no such effect; in rabbits 2 also like effects were produced by electrical stimulation of the pons. The pathology of the medulla oblongata, according to Erb, is still in an undeveloped state 3 and of very varied character; thus it is subject to the hypersemias and capillary dilatations of the encephalon, and to the degenerations, primary and secondary, which prevail in the cord. Besides diseases due to organic lesions, many symptomatic forms of disease owe their origin to a morbidly elevated sensibility and irritability of this portion of the neuro-axis, although the primary irritation may often be remote, and have its starting-point in the digestive or generative organs. It is thus that convulsive dis- 1 Op. cit. p. 69. 2 Van der Kolk, On Medulla Oblongata, p. 268. 3 Erb, “Diseases of the Medulla Oblongata,” Ziemsscv, vol. xiii. p. 863.
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