106 SEVENTH REPORT—1837. 
be useful in diminishing congestion, and thereby may co-operate pow- 
erfully with other remedies. Internal stimulants may be employed 
with advantage on the revival of the vital powers ; and when these are 
somewhat invigorated, general or local bleeding may be an invaluable 
adjunct.” 
Experiments on the Connexion between the Nerves and Muscles. By 
Wiriiam Harris Mappen, M.D. 
The author wishing to contribute to the satisfactory settlement of 
the questions relating to the connexion of nerves and muscles, first pro- 
poses to show, in opposition to several preceding writers, that narcotics 
do not in all cases produce any appreciable effect upon the contractile 
organs; that sedatives applied to nerves exclusively are absolutely 
inert; and that muscles exhibit distinct signs of irritability long after 
the nerves have lost their power of exciting them. ‘The experiments 
which are adduced in proof of these points were made upon frogs, 
which were killed by injecting tincture of opium into the stomach and 
intestines, by introducing essential oil of bitter almonds into the mouth, 
or by destroying the brain and spinal cord. The experiments were 
made upon the heart, voluntary museles generally,and amputated legs,— 
whose nerves, properly dissected, were immersed in a solution of opium, 
or for comparison in pure water. Galvanic stimuli were applied to the 
muscles or to the nerves alone; and, as a result of the whole investiga- 
tion, the author observes, “ When we see that narcotics have by no 
means generally a destructive influence over irritability ; when we see 
that, applied to nervous trunks alone, they produce no change upon 
the muscular fibre ; when we observe that nerves cease to have any 
power of exciting contractions long before the muscles themselves have 
lost their irritability (as all the experiments most distinctly show) ; 
when we remember that the number and size of the nerves distributed 
to any organ bear no proportion whatever to its irritability ; that many 
muscles are utterly insensible to any irritation of their nerves; and 
that a muscle whose nerve has been divided can recover its exhausted 
irritability in as short a time and as perfectly as one whose nerves have 
been uninjured ;—we shall, I conceive, feel the want of far more ex- 
tended and conclusive evidence, before we can assent to the doctrine 
which believes muscular contractility to be in all cases dependent 
upon nervous influence.” 
Of Disordered Conditions of the Human Body caused by the presence of 
Urinary Salts, although not amounting to Gravel or Stone. By 
Sir James Murray, M.D. 
The object of this paper was to show that “ the same acid, alkaline, 
or neutral products, which in some instances constitute sand or cal- 
culi, do in others prevail to excess in the constitution, in a liquid or 
diffused state; and that they thus give rise to a series of nervous and 
