550 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



contraction of the combined striped and unstriped muscu- 

 lature, is usually effective in accomplishing its object, but 

 is sometimes attended or followed by a considerable 

 degree of exhaustion or collapse, which is suggestive of a 

 great expenditure of energy, nervous and muscular, and 

 at times an accompanying leakage of sympathetic nerve 

 energy into the systemic nerve and muscular structures, 

 which may be quite consciously felt and appreciated, more 

 especially throughout the lower extremities. 



It might here be remarked that a singular parallelism 

 is established, but in inverse order, between the neuro- 

 muscular phenomena exhibited in the act of deglutition 

 on the one hand, and the acts of rectal and vesical 

 excretion and uterine contraction on the other, in the 

 former the systemic neuro-musculature initiating the 

 procedure, and in the latter, the sympathetic. These 

 combined systemico-sympathetic neuro-muscular activities 

 illustrate also the oneness as well as the duality of the 

 nervous systems, and the mutual or independent relation- 

 ships manifested by the combined nervous system in all 

 its more complicated physico-mental operations and 

 processes. 



