CIRCULATION AS ALL-PERVADING 



53 



an inverse process of disintegration and excretory disposal. 

 To this series of circulatory acts, or disposals of the tissue 

 pabulum, there comes an exception of a most remarkable 

 and astounding character, an exception which, in fact, 

 constitutes a new, but dependent, and higher series of 

 circulatory acts, or disposals, and which lifts the systemic 

 nervous system possessed animals into a higher, and distinct, 

 class of beings, entirely removed from the vegetable, and 

 lower animal forms, which exist solely in consequence of 

 their possession of a sympathetic nervous system. 



This exceptional system of systemic nerve circulatory 

 acts, and disposals of nervine tissue pabulum, begins in that 

 enormous storehouse, or emporium, of the raw material of 

 nerve protoplasm, provided by the great sanguineous circu- 

 lation within the matrix of the neuroglia, of brain, cord, 

 and ganglia, by a process of neuronal absorption, and 

 onward, and outward, growth of the neuronal fibres, until 

 their final disposal within, or as, the structural elements of 

 the skin and voluntary muscles, where the final, or terminal, 

 acts of excretory disposal ensue. 



The acceptance of these views implies, or entails, a belief 

 in the transmissibility of nerve protoplasm, in fact, all 

 protoplasm, along fibrillary channels, or fibro-intra-spaces, 

 wherever situated, and hence the further belief that all 

 fibres are not solid, but patent, porous, or pervious, some 

 to the passage of nutritive plasma inwards, and some to 

 the passage of effete and residual products of the processes 

 of nutrition and tissue waste outwards, according to their 

 position in the economy of the great or universal system of 

 circulation which exists in every organised body. Moreover, 

 the systemic nervous system of circulation is surrounded by 

 an insulating and protective circulation of fluid, or lymph, 

 which is the means, besides, of enabling it to maintain a 

 process of continuous u ventilation," so to speak, irrigation, 

 and scavenging, by which the great neuroglial magazine, 

 or nervine storehouse, and neuronal textures are kept 

 sweet and clean. This lymph, the cerebro-spinal, has been 

 described as " a negligible quantity " ; but nothing could 

 be further from the truth, for does it not provide a bufFer- 

 age against the concussions and frictions of everyday life, a 

 means, while physiological conditions exist, of maintaining 



