Physiology and pathology of the sympathetic system of nerves / by A. Eulenburg and P. Guttmann ; translated by A. Napier.

Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiology and pathology of the sympathetic system of nerves / by A. Eulenburg and P. Guttmann ; translated by A. Napier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    side, we also assumed that there should be analogous local centres, in the neighbourhood of those just mentioned, tor the vasomotor nerves of the head distributed with the cervical sympathetic—we thought Brown-Sequard's statements should, in the first place, undergo a rigid examination. We found, however, that their exactness was confirmed to only a very slight extent. It must first be denied that the burning, or (as Brown-Sequard expresses himself) the thermic excita- tion, of the surface of the brain is uniformly followed by a contraction of the palpebral fissure on the injured side. One is liable to err in this matter, as the contraction of the skin, following a wound in the neighbourhood of the orbit may easily be taken for a slight narrowing of the palpebral fissure. A constant dragging forward of the palpebra tertia in rabbits was seldom noticed by us. In certain cases, on the other hand, we observed, especially after burning in the region of the middle (parietal) part of the almost unconvo- luted convex surface of the brain in rabbits, an inequality of the pupils and of the palpebral fissure, and even in the prominence of the globe of the eye on both sides. After such thermic excitation, sometimes immediately, and sometimes a few hours later, the right pupil appeared decidedly more contracted (though still responding to light), the palpebral fissure smaller, and the globe of the eye less prominent than on the left—the uninjured—side. These phenomena certainly admit of a double explanation, especially as they appeared in only a very slight degree; the cause of the unsymmetrical action might as justly be assumed to be an irritation of the unwounded side as a paralysis of the injured side. In dogs, notwithstanding our exceedingly numerous ex- periments, we have not observed similar appearances; neither the disturbance of larger parts of the brain-surface by heat, nor the electric or chemical irritation of the same, was followed by decided ocu]o-})upillary phenomena on the same or the opposite side. As regards the cerebral centrum of the vasomotor fibres of the sympathetic, we have not yet arrived at decided results^ notwithstanding the large number of our experiments on rtibbits and dogs. The easily- performed experiments on rabbits shoAved, in partial, uni- lateral disturbance of the surface of the cerebrum by an iron at a red heat, either no difference, or such a small and variable difference, in the temperature of the ears, that no positive demonstrative value can be attached to them. On