A NEW DEPARTURE IN NEUROLOGY 67 



their surrounding cerebro-spinal fluid into their substance, 

 to be finally excreted through their ducts on the outer 

 surface of the skin. 



When all these particular and general exits from any 

 cause, pathological or otherwise, become unavailable, and 

 when the cerebro-spinal fluid is driven along the remain- 

 ing lines of least resistance, it is, of histological necessity, 

 compelled to find its way along the motor nervature, local 

 or general, according to excretional necessity, into the 

 substance of the muscle, or muscles, there to set up, it may 

 be, a pathological process which may lead to the production 

 of a definite disease, such, for example, as rheumatism. 



These arrangements, in short, constitute the cerebro- 

 spinal fluid drainage system, except where it escapes into 

 the neighbouring sympathetic nervous system, and where, 

 if it be septic, pathogenic processes of a far-reaching 

 character may be initiated and evolved, more especially in 

 the way of structural and visceral disease. 



It will thus, if these observations be true, be seen by 

 those who are bold enough to take up the subject with a 

 view to test it worth, that our estimate of it is warranted 

 on anatomical, histological, and physiological grounds, and 

 if so, that it is fraught with practical bearings on the pro- 

 gress of medicine and surgery, and is bound to become an 

 instrument by which the incidence and evolution of many 

 very obscure neural pathological problems may be rendered 

 much clearer, and indications for their treatment, curative 

 and ameliorative, be more scientifically secured. 



Moreover, such traumatic, or morbid, incidents as " the 

 spontaneous escape of cerebro-spinal fluid from the nasal " 

 and other " passages," and the incidence of herpetic vesi- 

 culation of the skin, and eruptive cutaneous phenomena 

 generally, find a physiological, and therefore natural and 

 true explanation, on lines determined by anatomical and 

 histological continuity of structure, and, what we may 

 legitimately call, a circulatory vasculature. 



