52 NERVOUS SYSTEM AND GENERAL SENSATION. 



servient to nutrition, they are called the nervous system of 

 organic life, in contradistinction to the cerebro-spinal, which 

 is caHed the system of animal life. The function of the 

 great sympathetic nerves has been so well described by Pro- 

 fessor Wagner, that we quote his conclusions on this sub- 

 ject. T. W.] 



[ 110. " In regard to the sympathetic nerve, and its func- 

 tions, two mutually opposed views are at the^present time en- 

 tertained by physiologists. One party, and this has hitherto 

 been the predominating one, considers the sympathetic as a dis- 

 tinct nervous system, independent, to a certain extent, of the 

 brain and spinal cord, and comprises it under the special de- 

 signation of the ORGANIC NERYOFS SYSTEM. Besides its con- 

 nections with the brain and spinal nerves, from which it receives 

 fasciculi, it is held to include peculiar organic fibres, the exist- 

 ence of which is problematical. The sympathetic appears much 

 rather to comprise no peculiar or intrinsic fibres. The grey 

 aspect of particular bundles depends on an admixture of gan- 

 glionic matter with their fibrils ; the dirty reddish hue of other 

 nerves is connected with the presence of an unusual quantity 

 of highly vascular filamentous tissue, which often surrounds 

 single primary fibres abundantly. We have, in fact, no evi- 

 dence of the existence of any other than the ordinary motory 

 and sensitive fibres in the sympathetic, these being derived 

 from the other cerebral and spinal nerves, and being plentifully 

 surrounded in the different ganglia of the head, neck, thorax, 

 and abdomen, with ganglionic globules or cells. The primary 

 fibres seem at most only to become somewhat thinner in the 

 ganglions than they are beyond them. In this view, conse- 

 quently, the sympathetic nerve is virtually a cerebro-spinal 

 nerve, and such is the light in which it now begins to be very 

 generally regarded. 



[ 111. " From recent investigations, it appears certain that 

 the sympathetic receives twigs from the whole of the cerebral 

 nerves, except those of the three higher special senses smell, 

 sight, hearing ; and farther, from both the anterior and poste- 

 rior roots of the spinal nerves at large. The primitive fibrils 

 of the sympathetic form plexuses within its numerous ganglia, 

 and have numerous ganglionic corpuscles interposed between 

 them. They emerge unchanged from the ganglia, from which 

 no new or particular fibrils appear to originate. 



[ 112. " Comparative anatomy brings many arguments in 



