166 LOCALIZED ELECTRIZATION. 



produced either by excitation or by paralysis of the vascular 

 nerves ; but, when the spinal nerves are irritated experimentally, 

 the parts supplied by them become inflamed ; hence these nerves 

 contain special fibres which may be called trophic. Irritation 

 of these produces acute inflammation, with rapid proliferation of 

 cells ; their paralysis is followed by wasting of the tissues. They 

 do not produce chemical changes, but excite only the nutritive 

 activity of the cells and tissues. In the neuralgias attended by 

 eruption, the inflammation attacks both the sensitive and the 

 trophic nerves, whence the simultaneous occurrence of pain and of 

 nutritive disturbance. The trophic nerves originate in tJie spinal 

 ganglia, or in others corresponding to them, — tJie Gasserian, for 

 example. They have a centrifugal direction. The foundation, 

 the principle, the cause of nutrition is in the cells ; its measure is 

 in the trophic nerves. 



D. — TJie clinical and anatomo-p)athological facts observed hy 

 Bdrensprung and Charcot realise only in part the theoretical ideas 

 of M. Samuel, (a). Exposition of the facts. The hypothesis of the 

 existence of trophic nerves began to be realised, in part at least, 

 (so far as concerns the presence in the spinal ganglia of nervous 

 fibres, exerting an evident action upon the nutrition of the skin), 

 from the time when Professor Barensprung discovered an alteration 

 of the intervertebral ganglia, in a case of herpes zoster occupying 

 a region that was in relations of innervation with them.^ 



Case X. — Summary. — A zona, occurring without known cause, in a tuber- 

 culous boy one year old, extended from the sixth to the ninth rib. More 

 than two inches in width, it commenced posteriorly, not far from the middle 

 Line, from the sixth to the eighth vertebra, and forming a demi-cincture, it 

 terminated exactly below the ensiform cartilage. The boy completely re- 

 covered from his zona, which followed a regular course, but died from 

 phtliisis six weeks after the zona commenced. The spinal yanglia corre- 

 sponding to the sixth, seventh, and eighth nerves, were firmly adherent to the 

 parictes of the intervertebral canal. The cellular tissue in their neighbourhood 

 exhibited inflammatory redness, and the ganglia, as a whole, were increased in 

 volume. The microscope shewed that the neurilemma also presented un- 

 questionable traces of inflammation. There were, properly speaking, no 

 changes in either the nervous elements of the ganglia or in those of the 

 nerves. 



* Barensprung, Case XXXVI. AUera- 

 tion of many special ganglia and of the 

 corresponding intercostal nerves. "Zona," 

 Ami. Charite'-Krankh, Berlin, vol. xi., 

 1863, p. 96. 



This learned physician is the author 

 of the most important treatise wliich has 

 been published of late years, upon herpes 

 zoster. At the close of his first memoir, 

 in which he has brought together fifty- 

 five new and important cases, he states, ! a vesicular eruption." 

 for the first time, and before he had 



ascertained the anatomical fact mentioned 

 above, his theory of Zona. " In conclu- 

 sion," he says, " zona is an alFection of 

 the ganglionic portions of the nervous 

 system ; it follows especially from irrita- 

 tion of the spinal gangUa, or of the gas- 

 serian ganglion. However, an irritation 

 of the jjeripheral portions of nerves 

 which contain fibres proceeding from 

 these ganglia, may also be followed by 



