150 Zentralblatt, für Physiologie. Nr. 3 



Autonomie 



Para-sympathetie Sympathetic Enteric 



I 



Ocular Oro-anal 



Tectal Bulbar autonom Sacral autonom Thoracic autonom 

 autonom 



I should like to offer a few remarks on these terms: 



1. The starting poiiit of the nomenclature is the use of the 

 term sympathetic. This has been employed for more than a hundred 

 years, and in the great majority of cases for the lateral chain of 

 ganglia which lie along the spinal nerves and the nerve fibies which 

 proceed from this, with their ganglia. The nerves of this System 

 have in general been put in Opposition to the ciliary nerves sup- 

 plying the sphincter iridis and ciliary muscle, the cranial secretory 

 fibres of the salivary glands, the inhibitory fibres of the heart, and 

 the nervus erigens supplying the external generative organs and 

 end of the intestine. If the term „sympathetic" were now used to 

 include these, it would involve a constant readjustment of ter- 

 minology in reading most of the Papers written in the last fifty years 

 upon the innervation of these parts of the body. Consequently it 

 has seemed to me necessary to keep to the customary usage of the 

 term sympathetic and not to include in it other related Systems. 

 Whilst the latter method ha? sometimes been followed it has been 

 chiefly from the point of view of the morphologist and at a time 

 when all spinal and most cranical nerves were supposed to have 

 a ,, visceral" brauch. This wider use has, it is true, been recently 

 advocated by Lewandowsky, but it drives him to speak of the 

 ,, Sympathisches System im engeren Sinne" and this is certainly too 

 cumbrous for frequent employment. 



2. If the term sympathetic is used for the System which arises 

 from the spinal cord between the origin of the fore and bind limbs, 

 some term is required to include it and the Systems which arise 

 from other parts of the central nervous System. Terms which at 

 various times have been used are ,, vegetative", ,,ganglionic" and 

 ,, visceral". The first implies a contrast which does not exist, the 

 second does not exclude the spinal ganglia, the third involves an 

 unwarranted change in the meaning of ,,viscera". In place of these 

 I have used the term ,,autonomic" which seems to me to have fewer 

 drawbacks than any of the others. 



3. The sympathetic supplies practically the whole of the body. 

 The other divisions of the autonomic system which arise from the 

 brain or spinal cord supply parts only. Physiologically and pharma- 

 cologically these divisions resemble one another more than any one 

 of them resembles the sympathetic. Hence it is sometimes necessary 



