494 S. WALTER RANSON 
It is important not to overlook the possibility of fibers grow- 
ing into the distal stump from other nerves in the neighborhood. 
Against the physiological tests of the absence of connection 
between the two ends of a divided nerve, failure to get reflex 
movement on stimulation of the peripheral stump or movement 
in the muscles of the leg on stimulation of the central stump, 
tests upon which Bethe has always laid the greatest stress, Langley 
and Anderson raise the following objections: (1) In some experi- 
ments in which anatomical connections could be demonstrated 
they were unable to get any reflex response by stimulating the 
peripheral stump. (2) It is possible that at a certain stage of 
regeneration the conductivity of the junctional portion is too 
small to give a reflex effect under the conditions of the experi- 
ment. (3) When the regenerated axons come from the femoral 
or obturator, as is sometimes the case, stimulation of the cen- 
tral end of the sciatic would not affect them. 
Lugaro (’05) saw that the operative methods employed by 
Bethe, did not exclude the possibility of downgrowth of axons 
from fibers still connected with the central nervous system. 
In order to remove all possible sources of such contamination, 
he resected the lumbo-sacral nerves together with their asso- 
ciated spinal ganglia at their exit through the dura mater in 
young dogs and cats, and was unable to find any medullated 
fibers in the sciatic four months after the operation. In three 
young dogs, in which he removed the lumbo-sacral spinal cord 
and its associated spinal ganglia he found after three months 
the same absence of medullated fibers in the sciatic nerve. 
Raimann (’05) cut away that portion of the lumbo-sacral 
spinal cord and associated ganglia from which the sciatic nerve 
arises; but his positive results, taken in connection with the 
negative ones of Lugaro, can only show the great tendency for 
fibers to grow into the degenerated sciatic from the obturator 
and femoral, which with their associated portion of the spinal 
cord remained intact in Raimann’s experiment. 
Segale (’03) is of the same opinion as Lugaro and distinguishes 
between compensation due to ingrowth from other nerves and 
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