oGi KIT15ITE OF AMYL IN THE COLLAPSE OF CHOLERA. 



tional nerve-fibres,* however, are divided, instead of the secretion 

 becoming- still more profuse, it becomes diminislied. We do 

 not possess sufficient knowledge regarding secretion from the 

 intestine to be certain that it can be modified in the same way 

 as that from the submaxillary gland; but if, as seems very 

 probable, this analogy subsists between them, we can easily 

 understand that, while a profuse flow of liquid into the intestine 

 indicates a certain amount of paralysis of its nerves, a more 

 moderate flow might be due to two opposite causes — viz., either 

 to a less degree of paralysis or to a still greater one. When I 

 speak of the choleraic discharges as a consequence of nervous 

 paralysis, I refer only to the rice-water stools, and do not at all 

 include the preliminary diarrhoea ; for that may depend only on 

 irritation of the intestinal nerves without paralysis, just as an 

 abundant secretion of saliva may be obtained from tlie sub- 

 maxillary gland by irritating some of the nerves connected with 

 it,t without division or paralysis of any one of them. 



In consequence of such a large amount of water being ab- 

 stracted from the blood by the intestinal glands in order to 

 form the rice-water stools, the blood itself becomes much thicker, 

 and the proportion of solid matter it contains much greater.^ 

 The intense thirst during life, and the dryness of the tissues 

 which is found after death, appear to be directly due to the 

 loss of water from the blood. 



The other symptoms have also been ascribed by some 

 persons to the effect of the thickened blood ; while others 

 attribute them partly to this, and partly to the reflex action of 

 the intestinal lesions on the nervous system ; and yet others to 

 the direct action of the cholera-poison itself 



As Dr. rarkes§ and Dr. George Johnson have clearly pointed 

 out, all the otlier symptoms can be referred to the blood being 



* The fibres connecting tlie ganglion and the chorda timpani, tiihne, 

 Lehrhuch der Physiologischen Ckemie, p. 4. 



t E.g., as by irritation of the chorda tympani, either directly by irritation 

 applied to its trunk, or reflexly through the lingual by acids applied to the 

 tongue. 



X Herrmann, Wittstock, Dittel, Thomson, &c., quoted by Giiesioger. Vir- 

 chow's Fatho^ogie, Bd. ii, Abt. 2, p. 334. 



§ FarJces on Cholera, London, 1847, p. 105. 



