PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 35 



could judge, the works written by foreigners had not gone into the 

 matter so far as Dr. Beale had gone in observations upon the nerves. 

 Their glasses had not the power which Dr. Beale had brought to bear 

 upon the subject. He was for this reason disposed to give a dis- 

 tinctive prominence to Dr. Beale's researches. He had advanced con- 

 siderably beyond what had been done on the Continent, and especially 

 in regard to the distribution of nerves upon the blood-vessels. He would 

 just ask, in reference to the small particles described as projecting 

 from the edge of the capillaries, whether those small particles might 

 be converted into blood corpuscles. On another point, he would men- 

 tion in regard to the capillaries in the frog's foot, that he quite agreed 

 with what Dr. Beale had said. A great number of experiments had 

 been made in regard to the effect certain substances produced on the 

 capillary circulation of the fi'og, and he (Dr. Lawson) had gone over 

 them himself invariably with the same results as Dr. Beale had shown ; 

 viz. : that the effect on the blood-vessels was due entirely to the action 

 of the nerves, and not to the influence of the substance employed in 

 the experiment. 



Mr. Hogg said perhaps it might not be known to every member of 

 the Society just how the question in debate stood. The subject, 

 although a moot one, was a very interesting one. For years it had been 

 a matter which greatly puzzled physiologists, to know how the blood 

 was propelled from the capillaries back again into the circulation. It 

 had been attributed in a g-reat measure to the action of the heart, but it 

 was very well known that amongst the invertebrata many have no heart 

 at all. There we had creatures that propelled their blood from some 

 cause that we could not explain. There was also in vegetable forms 

 a cii'culatory movement that went on continually without any apparent 

 nervous structure, or without any centre of motion whatever. It was 

 reasonable to suppose that the circulation in minute capillary vessels 

 was carried on in a similar manner. It was known that the rate at 

 which the blood moved thi-ough the capillai'ies was about 2 inches per 

 minute. The question as to how this cii'culation was carried on was 

 a very important one, having special bearings upon pathological sub- 

 jects, such, for instance, as inflammatory action. He thought Dr. 

 Beale had done good service in treating as he had done on the nerves 

 of the capillaries, because so far microscopists had not been able to 

 discover any contractile power in the capillaries at the adult stage 

 of existence. He wanted much to know how the blood was squeezed 

 out of the capillaries and carried back into the veins again. He had 

 undertaken some few years ago a series of investigations, on behalf of 

 the late Mr. Guthrie, into the nature of those capillaries, Mr. Guthrie 

 being at the time much interested in the structure of non-striated 

 muscular fibre, and he (Mr. Hogg) well remembered the fact of having 

 passed over the nerves in connection with their structure. He had 

 attributed the swellings observed to swellings in the non-striated 

 muscular fibre, entirely ignoring the presence of nerves. Dr. Beale 

 had mentioned that he believed that the nerves acted upon the mus- 

 cular fibres rather than upon the walls of the capillaries. Perhaps 

 that was so. He, however, should think there was direct action upon 



