530 Mr. Walter H. Gaskell [June 4, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, June 4, 1886. 



John Rae, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S. Manager, in the Chair. 



Walter H. Gaskell, M.D. M.A. F.R.S. 



The Sympathetic Nervous System. 



The lecturer commenced by giving a short sketch of Bichat's views 

 of the division of life into organic and animal life, and pointed out 

 Low that division naturally led to the conception of two separate 

 central nervous systems, the one, the sympathetic, to which all the 

 organic functions are to be referred, the other, the cerebro-spinal, 

 regulating the animal functions. He then pointed out how Remak's 

 discovery of a special kind of nerve-fibre, — the non-meduUated nerves 

 — associated only with the ganglia of the sympathetic system, tended 

 strongly to confirm Bichat's teaching of the existence of two separate 

 central nervous systems in the human body, each of which com- 

 municated with the other by means of its own special kind of nerve- 

 fibres; the cerebro-sj)inal supplying the sympathetic system with 

 white meduUated fibres, and the sympathetic supplying the cerebro- 

 spinal with grey or gelatinous non-meduUated fibres. He then con- 

 tinued as follows : — 



Even at the present day the teaching of Bichat still very largely 

 holds its ground. It is true that the tendency of modern physiology 

 is to increase the number of centres of action for the organic nerves, 

 which exist in the cerebro-sj)inal central axis, and therefore to do 

 away with the necessity for a separate independent symj)athetic 

 nervous system, yet the automatic actions of isolated organs such 

 as the heart, and the existence of special nerve-fibres in connection 

 with this system still induce the neurologists of the present day to 

 place the sympathetic nervous system on an equality with the brain 

 or spinal cord. In this lecture to-night I hope to give the death-blow 

 to Bichat's teaching, and to prove to you that the whole sympathetic 

 system is nothing more than an outflow of visceral nerves from certain 

 nerve-centres in the cerebro-spinal system, the ganglia of which are 

 not confined to one fixed position as is the case with the ganglia of 

 the posterior roots, but have travelled further away from the central 

 axis. 



I do not propose to-night to deal with the argument for the inde- 

 pendence of the symj^athctic nervous system, which is based upon the 

 automatism of such isolated organs as the heart ; I have already in 

 various papers given the reasons and arguments why I look upon 

 such automatic movements as due to the automatism of the cardiac 



