INHIBITION. 165 



and the sympathetic or non-medullated nerve (vasoconstric- 

 tors and accelerantes cordis) be admitted, if, further, we admit 

 as proved that the former, which are anti-motor in action, are 

 medullated down to their distribution in a distal series of 

 ganglion cells, while the latter, which are motor in action, 

 are non-medullated in nerve-trunks, having lost their sheath 

 in a proximal series of ganglion cells, it seems a shorter step 

 to admit as probable that an inhibitory nerve-fibre is anti- 

 motor to cardiac and to vascular muscle by virtue of an 

 interference action consummating itself in a distal pranelion 

 cell, than to refer cardiac rest and vascular relaxation to 

 a direct anabolic effect of nerve upon muscle. 



In France a somewhat similar question, though dif- 

 ferently formulated, has long since been raised. 



Bernard never abandoned his first idea concerning the 

 action of the sympathetic, to the effect that it had an 

 inhibitory action upon the tissues, arresting their function, 

 extinguishing, so to speak, or, rather, damping, their combus- 

 tion, that it was a fri^orific nerve. Until the end of his life 

 he maintained that the rise and fall of temperature in the 

 rabbit's ear after section and excitation of the cervical sym- 

 pathetic were not vascular effects, but the consequence of 

 the suppression and exaggeration respectively of a " frigor- 

 ific" action of the sympathetic. He thus anticipated, and 

 upon experimentally very impure data, the view which is 

 raising its head at the present day, to the effect that the 

 tissues of the body, especially the muscular tissues, are con- 

 trolled, as well as excited, by nerves, put to rest by anabolic 

 or inhibitory nerves, put into motion by katabolic or motor 

 nerves. But in this view the sympathetic, regarded as the 

 type of a katabolic nerve in England, is presented to us 

 an anabolic nerve. Morat has re-examined under more 

 thoroughly insulative conditions one of the cases relied 

 upon by Bernard in support of this thesis, viz., the case of 

 the submaxillary gland with its two nerves. Bernard had 

 discovered on this gland the well-known effects, viz., cooling 

 by excitation of the sympathetic, warming by excitation of 

 the chorda, but, refusing to admit with Brown-Sequard and 

 Waller that these were effects of vascular constriction and 



