OP THE NERVES IN GENERAL. 501 



other of these two first causes that the nervous action had been 

 continued, this action would not have been suspended a single 

 instant, and the animals would not have died in either of the 

 experiments above cited. As to the re-establishment of the 

 nervous functions by anastomoses, it is contradicted by a great 

 number of cases, in which the nerve having been cut in certain 

 subjects, and in others excised or destroyed by cautery, the 

 functions have been re-established in the first instance, and not 

 in the second. The re-establishment by anastomoses is com- 

 pletely proved false by an experiment, which consists in again 

 cutting on the same day, in the place of reunion, the pneumo- 

 gastric nerves cicatrized after previous section of these two 

 nerves at proper times. The animal, which has survived un- 

 til this moment, dies in the space of one or two days. 



It is then, neither by the interposition of a substance simply 

 moist between the two ends of a divided nerve, nor by the 

 action from a distance of the nervous system, nor finally by 

 anastomoses, that the re-establishment of the nervous func- 

 tions takes place, but by a true nervous cicatrix. We see in 

 effect the functions, at first altogether destroyed, become gra- 

 dually re-established, and follow, in their re-establishment, all 

 the process of organic union. It can not be denied, however, 

 that the nervous action is propagated to a certain degree, from 

 one part to the other of a divided nerve: this is proved by the 

 experiments of Wilson Philip, which have been repeated in 

 France.* 



790. The nerves are subject to other alterations besides 

 those which result from physical injuries; such are inflamma- 

 tion or neuritis, tumours or neuroma. Some consist in a sub- 

 cutaneous tubercle graniformor pisiform, hard and very pain- 

 ful; others in a schirrous tissue more or less voluminous. 

 Neuralgia and local insensibilities, paralysis and partial con- 

 vulsions, are the ordinary results of local affections of the 

 nerves; besides, these local affections extend sometimes to the 

 nervous centre, and give rise to general neuroses; 



* Vavasseur dt f influence du systeme nervettx sur la digestion stomacak; 

 Paris, 1823. 



