164 LOCALIZED ELECTKIZATION. 



III. — Nerves acting directly upon the nutrition of 



THE TISSUES. 



The increase of activity of the local circulation does not suffice 

 to explain certain pathological states. This idea had taken root 

 in some minds before it was confirmed, at least in part, by patho- 

 logical anatomy. 



A. — Theory of M. Brotvn-Sequard ; ojnnion of ill. Virchow. — 

 M. Brown-Sequard was the first to express clearly this important 

 view, in the lectures which he published in 1858, and republished 

 in 1860.^ 



"The nervous system," he says, "determines an increase of the 

 attraction exerted upon the blood by the living tissues, and, in 

 this case, the phenomenon is attended by dilatation of the blood- 

 vessels. The nervous system ads directly and originally upon the 

 jparenchyma of the tissues'^ Elsewhere he writes again, " The 

 simple fact of an increase or a diminution in the quantity of blood 

 that passes through a part of the body in a given time, assuredly 

 suffices to explain the physiological changes, and some of the 

 morbid modifications, which we habitually observe in secretion and 

 in nutrition; hut some other pathological states seem to require for 

 their production, something more than a simple change in the quantity 

 of blood. 



" An inflammation, for example, cannot he explained hy a modifi- 

 cation of this kind, because, after section of the cervical sym- 

 pathetic, we see a considerable increase of blood occur in the eye, 

 tlie ear, &c., and continue during many weeks or months without 

 producing inflammation. It is true that the morbid action (in- 

 flammation) developes itself much more easily in these parts than 

 in others ; but, I repeat, it does not manifest itself spontaneously, 

 as a pure and simple consequence of increase in the quantity of 

 blood. It is therefore necessary to admit that, ivhen a nervous 

 influence acts upon certain tissues so as to produce inflammation, 

 the principal cause of the morbid process is not the increase in the 

 quantity of blood, but rather the modifications which the tissues 

 undergo, and tvhich produce an unusual attraction for arterial 

 blood} 



B. — Almost at the same time Yirchow also declared that modi- 

 fications of nutrition did not depend, directly, upon the larger or 

 smaller quantity of blood that circulated through the part. But, 

 resting upon the experiments of CI. Bernard, who showed that 



Brown-Se'quarrl, ' Central Nervous System," Philadelphia, 1860, p. 172. 

 Ibid., loc. cit. 



