THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF LOCALIZED FARADIZATION. 165 



section of the great sympathetic produced no other result than an 

 increase of the local circulation and calorification, without partici- 

 pation of cells or morbid action, and without inflammation, he 

 argued against those (the neurists), who held that nutrition was 

 under the control of innervation, and maintained that the pro- 

 perties of the cells themselves were the essential causes of nutritive 

 phenomena. 



" The increase in the nutrition of parts," he wrote, " should 

 much rather be attributed to certain conditions of tissue (irrita- 

 tion) ; conditions which are able to modify the affinities of the 

 tissues for the various principles of the blood, or to the presence 

 in the blood of certain substances possessing a special attraction 

 for certain parts of the body.^ 



It is well known that a distinguished pathologist, M. Spiess, has 

 maintained, in opposition to Virchow, that nutrition is always 

 under the control of innervation." 



For myself, I have so often seen alterations of peripheral 

 nutrition supervene consecutively to lesions of certain points of 

 the nervous centres or of nerves, that it would be impossible for 

 me to overlook the influence that innervation exerts upon nutri- 

 tion. It was in reference to the difficulty of explaining these 

 alterations of nutrition, consecutive to nervous lesion, that I found 

 occasion to say, if there ivere no trojiliic nerves it would he necessary 

 to invent them. 



C. — Trojihic nerves of Samuel. — Such were the ideas entertained 

 in 1858 by Brown-Sequard and Virchow, upon the influence of 

 the nervous system in the production of the phenomena of nutri- 

 tion and secretion, when, in 1860, Samuel endeavoured to give 

 shape to notions analogous to those of Brown-Sequard, by suggest- 

 ing an anatomical and physiological description of the nerves . 

 which have for their function diredhj to sufi^ort the nutritive 

 adivitij of the tissues. 



This learned observer has shown, in a highly interesting volume,'' 

 the direct, and indirect, action of the nervous system upon nutrition ; 

 he has inquired what are the affections of this system, which 

 occasion various disorders, and he has come to the conclusion, 

 from experiments upon animals, and from clinical observation on 

 man, that there are certain special fibres which he has denominated 

 trophic nerves. 



The following is a summary of the chief facts upon which 

 he rests his doctrine. According to him, inflammation cannot be 



^ Virchow, Xa ratJioJogie cellulaire, etc. 

 3rd oditiou, Paris, 1868. 



•^ Spiess, rathologlsche I'liijsioknjie, 



Fnuikfurt-ain-Maiii, 1857. 



' Samuel, Truyhischen Nerven, 

 siK, ISGO. 



Lcip- 



