THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF LOCALIZED FAEADIZATION. 157 



which has served as a point of departure for numerous researches. 

 Besides contraction of the pupil, Pourfour-du-Petit had also 

 observed that the vessels of the conjunctiva lost their elasticity, 

 and became distended by blood consecutively to the section. In 

 1840, ]\I. Stilling,'' who had also recognised the action of the 

 ganglionic system upon the contractility of vessels, called the 

 special nerves conveying it the vaso-motors. M. CI. Bernard 

 announced in different publications, in 1851 and in 1855, the 

 great physiological fact that section of the great sympathetic is 

 constantly followed by a considerable afflux of blood to the parts of 

 the head to which the nerve is distributed.^ M. Brown-Seqnard 

 discovered, in 1852, that galvanization of the great sympathetic 

 produced contraction of the vessels and diminution of temperature ; 

 and, consequently, that the principal phenomenon described by M. 

 CI. Bernard, was due to paralysis of the blood-vessels.^ Three or 

 four months later, M. CI. Bernard, not knowing of M. Brown- 

 Sequard's publication, announced the same fact to the Biological 

 Society.^ M. Ludwig was the first to suggest the idea of irritating 

 the glandular nerves, and especially the sub-maxillary gland, the 

 principal vessels of which he laid bare, with their nerve-branches, 

 after having isolated Wharton's duct, in which a canula was in- 

 serted, so as to exhibit the flow of saliva. The excitation of the 

 nerve produced, in a short time, an extraordinary secretion of this 

 liquid. (M. Ludwig enabled me to witness this beautiful experi- 

 ment, when, in 1856, I attended the congress of naturalists at 

 Vienna.) M. Maurice Schiflf instituted, in 1851, a series of experi- 

 ments upon the chorda tympani, in order to show that all the 

 salivary nerves are not contained in the proper filaments of the 

 trifacial (lingual), but that they perhaps proceed from its anasto- 

 mosis with the facial (chorda tympani).^ These researches have 

 been repeated, with the same results, by many authors. But it is 

 to M. CI. Bernard that all the honour is due of having discovered 

 the actual mechanism of certain local circulations, by showing that 

 the vessels are placed under the control of constrictor and dilatator 

 nerves which act upon them reciprocally. In 1856, he showed 

 that by exciting the chorda tympani we could produce, in the 



^ Stilling, Physiol, patliologisclie, und exerce sur la temperature animale. Paris, 



Med. practisclie Untersucliungen iiber 1851. 



Siiinal-irritation. Leipsig, 1840. - See' Philalelphia Medical Examiner,' 



' See the Comptes rendus de la Socie't^ August, 1852, p. 489. 



de hiulogie, Decemhie, 1851. Gazette Med- ^ See Comptes rendus de la Socie'te' de 



icale de Paris, 1852, p. 74. Comptes ren- hiologie {Gazette Medkale, 18.53, p. 71). 



dus de VAcade'mie des Sciences, seance du * See Schiif, Ueher motorische Zungen- 



29 Mars, 1852. Becherches experimentales lahmung (^Archiv fiir physwlogische Heil- 



sur le grand sympathique et spe'cialement Icunde, von Wunderlich und Vierordt, 



sur I'influence que le section de ce nerf 1852). 



