The Gulstonian lectures on secondary degenerations of the spinal cord : delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, March 1889.

  • Tooth, Howard H.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Gulstonian lectures on secondary degenerations of the spinal cord : delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, March 1889. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    After the degenerated myeline material has ^of ^erYes°^ ^^^^PP^^^^^' °^ ^^'^^ before that, in the second month, or later, primitive fibrils make their appear- ance. These are said to appear in the primitive sheaths of the old nerves. They are at first without myeline; however, they soon acquire a medullary sheath, but are for a long time smaller than the natural nerve fibres. This slight sketch may serve for the purpose of comparison with the analogous condition of the spinal cord. I propose to show that though, as might be expected, the two processes- resemble each other in the main, yet they differ in several rather important points of detail. It must be remembered that there are certaio tween^rS^es^of striking histological points of difference between Cord and Peri- the nerve fibre of the peripheral nerves and * that of the cord. The nerve tube of the cord consists of an axis cylinder and a medullary sheath, which are indistinguishable from those of a nerve. A cord fibre has nO' definite primitive sheath. It is surrounded by the close network of the neuroglia, which takes the place of the tough structure- less sheath coating the 7ierve fibre from end to end. We shall see that this may account for some of the histological pheno- mena of degeneration. ]The cord fibre is apparently devoid of the nerve nuclei or'corpuscles which take such an important share in the nutrition of the nerve fibre. The causes of secondary degeneration come Causes of under three categories :— Deg^enera^ion. i- Destruction of trophic centres in brain or medulla. 2. Interruption in the continuity of fibres, or bundles of fibres^ in their course; that is, either by complete section, crushing, slow^ pressure by new growths, or displacement of vertebrae, or lastly' by invasion and consequent strangulation of fibres by new gro^vths■ or transverse myelitis. 3. Section of, or other injury to, posterior roots, by which centripetal fibres are cut off from their trophic centres in the posterior root ganglion. Under the first we have principally to
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