Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge].

  • Ridge, Benjamin
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of organic life : showing that the gases are of equal importances with the solids and fluids in the laws which regulate the progress of matter from the lowest inorganic to the highest organic conditions / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    170/534 (page 108)
    admitting the very facts I wish to make clear. Xerves are not producers of force or power, hut conveyers of that which is produced from other sources. Bones sustain power; muscles show it, use it, and even make it, precisely as nerves give intelligence or direction to them. Xerves are, then, only agents to convey the processes of integrity or Avant of integrity of all parts of the body, to some given spot. They act only as masters in directing and controlling, precisely as a government might direct a nation, or a general an army; as servants of the State. So nerves are now masters now servants to the body. Some of their most important duties lie in their motor sympathies,— a sym])atliy shoAvn in one part for affections Avhose cause lies in another, and Avherever these are dis- tinctively manifested, the positive and negative, or current and recurrent, or reflex actions are seen. The great value and healthy condition of all nerves is derived, as I have said, from the inorganic fluids always keeping them moist. When a drought sets up in the system, such as in fever, &c., and these natural lubrica- tors are absorbed; nerve power loses force. The motor actions are inperfect, and the sentient are in abeyance. People may roll about in their beds, but the muscles are under no control; they may talk a lot of in- coherent nonsense, Avithout poAver of arrangement, or knoAving Avhat they say. Severe bloAvs may deaden nervous powers, and hence quiet them Avlien in an exaggerated state from frenzy, delirium, or insanity. Hence, no doubt, the old barbarous system arose of the treatment of this latter condition by corporeal punish- ment. Extreme cold is said to deaden nervous action: 80 it may; but it cannot do so Avithout first stoj)ping