THE CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID in 



daily currency of brain and nerve exchange, is of the 

 greatest importance to health, and although the subject, as 

 localised here, has to some extent been referred to, we 

 think it has not yet been exhausted, and therefore that it 

 is calling for further discussion. 



Physiologically the necessity for a solution of the many 

 problems hinging on this most important, but com- 

 paratively little known subject, becomes more and more 

 clamant as the morphological and clinical facts, the 

 bacteriological data, and the generalisations deducible from 

 them accumulate, and because the practical bearings ot 

 that solution on the clinical work of the physician and 

 surgeon, both diagnostic, therapeutical, and prophylactic, 

 must be estimated as of the first importance ; besides, it 

 opens up avenues of possible progress for the sanitarian, 

 and aids in clearing "the field of vision" of the exponents 

 of preventive medicine. 



In continuation of the discussion, we would reiterate 

 that the role of the cerebro-spinal fluid seems to us to be 

 to a large extent excretory, and that one of the main 

 functions of the channels, already described as pervading 

 the entire .nervous system, would seem to us to be to 

 afford a means of direct exit for the effete and worn- 

 out material resulting from the disintegration of nerve 

 structure due to tear and wear. 



The circulation of the- blood generally, through the 

 capillaries of the vascular system proper, affords the means 

 by which nutritive materials are conveyed to where they 

 are required, and whereby osmosis or molecular circula- 

 tion, into the tissue matrix and enclosed tissue spaces, 

 through the walls of these vessels they finally reach, by 

 physiological selection, the various textures and organs 

 composing the body, and become appropriated and in- 

 corporated by them. This process (the nutritive) having 

 been accomplished, and a variable period of textural 

 incorporation enjoyed by these materials, what remains 

 of their intra-corporeal journeyings and wanderings is 

 resumed. In other words, after their brief period of 

 incorporation and settled (?) tenancy of the bodily fabric, 

 and their brief span of communal existence is, so to speak, 

 ended, when in turn they become worn by atomic, or 



