EXTRACT XXXIX. c. 



ON IS THERE SUCH A THING AS NEUROLYSIS, AND IS 

 IT AKIN TO ELECTROLYSIS ? 



WE have ventured on the use of the term neurolysis here, 

 to signify what seems to us a process seemingly akin in 

 character to that of electrolysis, and which at times results 

 in breaking up the physical, and it may be the chemical, 

 union of the constituent parts, or elements, of certain 

 physiological substances within, or in real or vital union 

 with the body for example, as we observe in cases of 

 herpetic and other eruptions, where the composition of 

 the blood corpuscles, in- or out-side of the neighbouring 

 capillary vessels, undergoes a change, from being played 

 upon by discharges of nerve force, their physical con- 

 tinuity being dissolved, and their haemoglobin set free 

 staining and colouring the vesicular contents into which 

 it escapes. 



This process seems due, in such circumstances, to the 

 action of nerve, or nervine, force on the substance of the 

 corpuscles, or the corpuscular body substance, to which it 

 has gained direct access, by the breaking down of the 

 histological, or material, mechanism of the nerve endings, 

 and by the consequent escape of the nerve energy into 

 the surrounding circulatory and other textures ; this 

 process, moreover, as has before been contended, repre- 

 sents a reverse, or efferent, nerve force current along the 

 fibres of an afferent, sensory, or peripheral nerve, which, 

 we may be warranted in inferring, is likely to be much 

 more destructive to a terminal nerve apparatus whose 

 function is to receive and transmit inward, and not to 



