THE 



NATURAL HISTORY REVIEW 



A 



QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE. 



tvuws. 



XL. — Course of Lectures on the Physiology and Patho- 

 logy op the Central Neryous System. Delivered at the Eoyal 

 College of Surgeons of England, in May, 1858, by C. E. Brown- 

 Sequard,M.D.,E.B.S., &c. &c. London. Williams and Norgate. 

 8yo. pp. 276, 1860. 



( Conclvdedfrom page 287. ) 



For a considerable time past physiologists have been familiar with 

 the influence of reflex actions on secretion and nutrition. Since the 

 publication of Muller's Manual of Physiology, Stilling's Treatise on 

 Spinal Irritation, and Henle's various works, no treatise on physio- 

 logy, or general pathology, has appeared which has not fully recog- 

 nised the reflex phenomena of nutrition and secretion, as something 

 well known. This makes it the more surprising, that, shortly before 

 his death, Dr. Marshall Hall announced, as a new discovery, the sup- 

 posed existence of an excito- secretory and secretory nerve system. 

 Dr. Campbell of Georgia, U. S., claimed priority of this discovery, 

 which Marshall Hall in a great measure conceded to him : but the 

 truth is that neither one nor the other adduced one single fact to 

 show the existence of any such distinct system of nerves. Admitting 

 the vast importance of the influence "exercised over secretion and 

 nutrition by the vaso-motor nervous system, admitting that many 

 phenomena hitherto inexplicable, find, in the effects produced upon 

 the blood-vessels by paralysis and excitation, whether direct or reflex, 

 of this system, a complete explanation ; still the question comes, can 

 we explain all the phenomena, normal and pathological, showing the 

 direct or reflex influence of the nervous system on nutrition and 

 secretion by deduction from the above truths, concerning the 



VOL. I. — N. H. R. 3 F 



