A compendium of human & comparative pathological anatomy / by Adolph Wilhelm Otto ; tr. from the German, with additional notes and references by John F. South.
- Otto, Adolph Wilhelm, 1786-1845.
- Date:
- 1831
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A compendium of human & comparative pathological anatomy / by Adolph Wilhelm Otto ; tr. from the German, with additional notes and references by John F. South. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![the sympathetic nerve going to different organs, has been, in diseases of the latter, observed to be diminished or increased. ^^ (1) Of the great number of writers on diseases of the nerves, as they are generally of little consequence for pathological anatomy, I notice only the following:—Karl Oppert D. de vitiis nervorum organicis. 4to. Berol. 1815,— Jos. Swan, A Dissertation on the Treatment of morbid local affections of the Nerves, London, 1820.—P. /. Descot Dissertation inaugurale sur les affections locales des nerfs, 4to. Paris, 1822, and since enlarged and published in 8vo. 1825.—On the varieties of the nerves, compare the manuals of Sommerring, Meckel, A. C. Bock Die Riickenmarksnerven, u. s. w. Leipz. 1827, and DubrevU in Ephem. Medic, de Montpellier, Vol. V. May, 1827. (2) Clarke's case of total deficiency of the nervous system, v. Philos. Trans. 1793, Part II. p. 154-164, seems to me not to be relied on; it was probably not thoroughly dissected. (3) Deficiency of the nerves is always in causal and connected proportion to malformation, because the formative principle seems to spring from them ; thus, for instance, in acephalous monsters, not merely are the nerves of the head and the upper part of all the nerves, but also the tenth and eleventh pairs, and the frenic nerves, in rare cases, wanting when there is a distinct chest, lungs, and diaphragm. The number of spinal nerves depends on the vertebrae; hence, in acephalous and hemicephalous monsters with but few cervical vertebrae, in monsters with imperfect development of the hinder part of the spine, or even in otherwise perfectly formed men and animals, of which one or other vertebrae is deficient, one or several pairs of nerves are wanting. In monsters^ of which the extremities are deficient or imperfect, the deficiency of the limbs is always connected with that of the nerves ; thus in single fingers and toes, hand and foot, fore arm and leg, their nerves are also wanting; if the whole limb be deficient, so also is the brachial and lumbo-sacral plexus, and without any branches being given off*, except those to the adjacent parts of the trunk; lastly, if with deficient arm the region of the shoulder be wanting, or below the one half of the pelvis, so the above-mentioned nervous plexuses are wanting, and there proceed from the vertebral holes merely some posterior threads to the muscles of the neck, and the undermost layer of the muscles of the back. In the not uncommon human monsters of which the radius of the fore arm and the thumb are deficient, the radial nerve terminates at the elbow-joint, or passes down merely as a single thin thread to the back of the hand. In a roe which had no fore legs, and of which the hind legs were much distorted, the obturator and crural nerves were wanting ; but the ischiatic was large, v. Serlo D, Monstror. extremitatibus carentium exempla tria, p. 20. Berol. 1826. Lastly, in syren monsters sometimes, on the contrary, the ischiatic nerves are wanting, and are replaced by the anterior nerves. (4) I have seen a case of this kind in one lower extremity.—Meckel, Hand- buch der pathol. Anat. Vol. I. p, 173, found neither muscle nor nerve in the right lower extremity of an acephalous monster. The same was also noticed by Breschet on the right lower extremity, v. Med. chirurg. Trans, Vol. IX. p. 433, 1818, and by Chaussievy v. Bullet, de la Faculte de Medec. Vol. V. p. 405.—In a sheep, neither of the hind legs had either muscles or nerves, v. Schroeder van der Kolk Observat. anatom. pathol. et practici argumenti, Fasc. I, p. 9, Amstel. 1826. In accessory parts of monsters the nerves are frequently wanting; thus in a child, from the pit of whose stomach the arms and bones of a parasite, No. 2913 of Bresl. Mus., were produced, I could find no nerves; and they were also wanting in a calf, two geese, and several fowls, on the pelves of which . supernumerary legs were attached ; also in two instances of children with a sixth finger.—Mayer found in a parasite, on the breast of a child in which there were arms and bones, no other nerves tlian a delicate thread from the renal plexus. . V. von Griife and v. Walther's Journ. d. Chir. 1827. Vol. X. Part I. p. 44. (5) Prochaska found, in a cyclopic child, only the third, seventh, and eighth ])airs of nerves, v. Abhandl. der bohm Gesellschaft. Jahrgang, 1788, p. 230, Frag. 1789.— Carlisle missed, in a lamb which had no face, not only the cere-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21071135_0459.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
