On the ganglia and nerves of the heart / by Robert Lee.

  • Robert Lee
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the ganglia and nerves of the heart / by Robert Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/22 (page 43)
    [ « ] III. On the Ganglia and Nerves of the Heart. By Robert Lee, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London. Received May 7,—Read June 7, 1848. Haller, Wrisberg, Soemmering, and other eminent anatomists prior to Scarpa, have affirmed that no nerves are distributed to the muscular substance of the heart, and that its contractions do not depend upon nervous influence. B. J. Behrends, a pupil of Soemmering, in 1792 published a memoir, entitled “ Dissertatio qua demonstratur Cor Nervis carere,” in which it is admitted that nerves accompany the coronary arteries, and it is distinctly asserted that the mus- cular structure is entirely destitute of nerves*. The elaborate and splendid work of Scarpa, “Tabulae Neurologicse,” fol. 1794, has for its chief object the refutation of these erroneous views ; but before referring to the discoveries of that great authority, I may proceed to state that in the mag- nificent Plates of Mr. Swan only a few small branches of nerves have been figured, which accompany the trunks of the coronary arteries, and the muscular substance of the heart is represented as almost completely destitute of nerves. M. Chassaignac, who translated in 1838 Mr. Swan’s “Demonstration of the Nerves of the Human Body,” has repeatedly denied, in the most positive manner, that any nerves except those which accompany the coronary arteries have yet been demonstrated in the heart. “ Anatomie n’a constat^ jusqu’4 present, dans le coeur que des nerfs arteriels,”—“ l’existence de filets nerveux independantes des vaisseaux propres au tissu charnu est encore a demontrer.” p. 23. Scarpa, however, had clearly delineated and described such nerves, viz. running on the heart independently of, and distinct from the coronary arteries. In the work above cited, he has given five views of the nerves of the human heart, in some of which, e. g. Tab. IV., upwards of twenty filaments may be counted on the same trans- verse line near the base of the heart, together with numerous anastomotic angular enlargements, which Scarpa does not specify as ganglions in his text. In the hearts of the larger herbivorous Mammals, however, Scarpa describes and delineates both ganglia and fusiform enlargements of the nerves, which he calls corpora olivaria, and these not only upon the nerves at the base of the heart, but upon those that are spread over the superficies of the ventricle : his words are, “ Preecipue autem nervo- rum cardiacorum trunci ad basim cordis et inter majora vasa arteriosa intumescant * Ac primo quidem nervorum cordis examini scrupulosius intendens, turn observando, turn analogice conclu- dendo didici nullos omnino nervos ne surculum quidem in ipsam cordis carnem dispergi. G 2