352 LECTURE XIV. 



that they manifest themselves in spite of the section* 

 With regard to the pneumogastric it was, as is well 

 known, long since shown by Traube that the paralysis 

 of the rima glottidis, whereby the entrance of the buc- 

 cal fluids into the air-passages is facilitated, is the 

 principal source of the inflammation ; besides, the more 

 accurate interpretation of the pathological specimens 

 has determined, that a great part of what had been 

 called pneumonia, was really nothing more than atelec- 

 tasis with hypersemia of the lungs ; actual pneumonia 

 may with certainty be avoided, if the possibility of the 

 penetration of foreign bodies into the bronchi is cut off. 

 The same has been ascertained to be the case with the 

 inflammations coming on after the section of the fifth 

 pair, and indeed by means of a very simple experiment. 

 After a number of attempts of the most varied kind 

 had been made for the purpose of removing the different 

 disturbing influences affecting the eye that was deprived 

 of its sensibility, a very simple method was at last dis- 

 covered in Utrecht for providing the eye with a substi- 

 tute for its sensitive apparatus ; for Snellen sewed be- 

 fore the eyes of animals, in which he had cut the fifth 

 pair, their still sensitive ears. From that time the ani- 

 mals had no more attacks of inflammation, inasmuch as 

 on the one hand a direct protection was afforded to the 

 eye, and on the other the animals were preserved by 

 the presence of a sensitive covering from all traumatic 

 influences. As soon as sensation was re-established, not 

 in the eye itself, but only before the eye, what was 

 really nothing more than a traumatic inflammation was 

 got rid of.f 



* For if, as the neuro-pathologists assume, irritation produces inflammation 

 through the medium of the nerves, then, when the nerves are cut, all inflammation 

 ought to be impossible. 



f In the text the influence of the section of nerves is perhaps not described with 



