160 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION. 



truth. How often, for example, in matters falling within my 

 personal researches, has clinical observation elucidated the physi- 

 ology of movement, and anticipated the anatomical fact. I will, 

 therefore, in this place say briefly on what clinical facts my hypo- 

 thesis reposes, as far as regards the vaso-motor dilatators, 



I have said that the two orders of vaso-motors (constrictors or 

 ganglionic vaso-motors, and dilatators or cerebro-spinal vaso-motors) 

 as reciprocal moderators, appear to me necessary, not only to the 

 functions of the organs on which they ramify, but also to the pre- 

 servation of the normal calibre of the small vessels. Indeed, when 

 one of the two sets is paralysed, the local circulation is profoundly 

 altered. If the ganglionic vaso-motors are paralysed, the arterioles 

 remain dilated, inert, and the venous blood becomes red ; while 

 the reverse happens if the cerebro-spinal nerves are affected. 



Clinical observation seems to me to show that the force of the 

 cardiac impulses (which moreover, as shown by M. Marey, are less 

 felt in the vessels in proportion as their calibre diminislies) does 

 not suiSciently moderate the power of the constrictor nerves of the 

 vessels. In a certain number of cases indeed, in which it seemed 

 established that the anterior cornua of the spinal cord had under- 

 gone rapid change, without lesion of the ganglionic system (as in 

 infantile myelitis) I have observed, at a time more or less distant 

 from the commencement of the disease, that the parts receiving 

 morbid innervation were affected as follows: — The vessels were 

 contracted, the calibre of the cutaneous veins diminished, the skin 

 was discoloured or cyanosed, the temperature lowered, and at the 

 same time the muscles were wasted. Having, then, found that 

 the beats of the heart retained their normal energy, and that the 

 pulse was not weakened, I have concluded that the power of 

 the cardiac impulses was insufficient to neutralize the muscular 

 force Avhich tended incessantly to close the small vessels ; that it 

 was not enough alone to preserve the normal calibre ; and, in a 

 word, that the force which dilates the small vessels was paralysed. 



I think then that, under these circumstances, the diminution 

 of calibre of the small vessels is explained by the unrestrained or 

 predominant action of their constrictor muscles, from wliich a 

 local ischsemia results. Ordinarily, the lesions of the cord, and 

 of the nerves which proceed from it, produce in the first place 

 a neuro-paralytic hyperemia, which, at a more advanced period, 

 is replaced by the opposite disorder of the local circulation, that is, 

 by the morbid phenomena described above. (May we not attribute 

 also to these same disorders of the circulation the diminution 

 or loss of electro-muscular contractility which supervenes so 

 quickly in atrophic paralysis ?) 



