THE SYSTEMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM 35 



occurrence of the diseases to which the motor nervature 

 and musculo-osseous structures are liable ; besides, it 

 introduces into the non-nervous structures, with which 

 these latter are anatomically related, the secondary pro- 

 ducts of nervine diseases, which, in turn, constitute a 

 pathogenic array of the most formidable order, and one, 

 the prophylaxis of which must be sought for on all 

 occasions, while the far-reaching process of morbid causa- 

 tion is still in embryo. 



As types of efferent or motor nerve disease, we may 

 allude to rheumatism and myopathy the first, it may be, 

 positively involving the whole neuro-musculo-osseous 

 economy, the latter passively leading to negative patho- 

 logical results and complete atrophy of a part or of the 

 whole of the voluntary musculature. 



Typical rheumatism, acute, subacute, and chronic, 

 covers a very large clinical area, and no doubt in its 

 causation may and must be due to a variety of pathogenic 

 influences ; suffice it, however, here to say that in many 

 cases it is of undoubted microbic origin, in which cases the 

 microbe effects an entrance into the incubatory medium of 

 the cerebro-spinal lymph, where it multiplies, and finally 

 invades the motor intermeningeo-neurilemmar spaces, 

 along which it finds its way into the histologically con- 

 tinuous intra-sarcolemmar spaces, where the lethal effects 

 of its presence at once become manifest in the functional 

 disability of the implicated musculature, the generation of 

 local sub-inflammatory phenomena, and more or less pro- 

 nounced pyrexia these phenomena being due to the pre- 

 sence of the microbe, with its trail or train of toxin, formic 

 acid, etc., amid structural surroundings of a highly organ- 

 ised and functionated character. Should the zymosis end 

 here by retrogression and peripheral excretion of the 

 tainted cerebro-spinal lymph, convalescence may quickly 

 follow, but if progress of the microbe be uninterrupted, 

 the invasion, piecemeal, of the whole musculo-skeletal 

 structures inevitably follows, in which case the disease 

 presence affects in turn the whole lymph vasculature, 

 neural and haemal, with their contained fluids, and second- 

 arily the blood itself, with the whole non-neural textures 

 to which it is distributed thus we see what is at first a 



