262 ] tax,-; PR- PHILIP'S OBSERVATIONS ON 



cumstances, and from his mind having been more particularly directed to the 

 subject, is in several respects better fitted than others for reviewing the infe- 

 rences, he hopes the following observations will not be unacceptable ; especially 

 as they are such as would naturally have made part of my former papers, 

 had it not appeared to me better to confine myself to a simple statement of 

 the facts, till the whole had been laid before the Society. 



The present paper is offered to it for the purpose of supplying what may be 

 regarded as a defect in those papers, and also as the conclusion of the Inquiry 

 in which I have been so long engaged. I am fully sensible of the vast extent 

 of the subject, and that it is only the great outline which I have attempted to 

 trace. If this has been accurately laid down, my object has been accomplished. 



The nerves may be divided into two classes, those which proceed directly 

 from the brain and spinal marrow to the parts to which they convey the in- 

 fluence of these organs ; and those which enter such ganglions as receive 

 nerves proceeding from different parts of the brain and spinal marrow, whether 

 these nerves have or have not protuberances belonging to themselves which 

 have also been termed ganglions, but which receive only the different fibres 

 that belong to the particular nerve to which they are attached, and from the 

 circumstances in which they are placed, must have a different or at least a 

 more confined relation to other parts of the nervous system. To the former, 

 therefore, I shall for the sake of distinction, and to avoid circumlocution, con- 

 fine the term ganglion. 



I beg leave to lay before the Society the following extract from lectures 

 delivered by Mr. Brodie before the College of Surgeons, and which have not 

 yet been published, in which this accurate anatomist and physiologist has 

 given the sum of our knowledge respecting the structure of the ganglions. 

 " Those bodies which are found in certain nerves which appear to be formed 

 by an enlargement of the nervous substance, and which are denominated 

 ganglia, are of a complicated structure. Into ganglia the nervous fibres may 

 be traced, and from these ganglia the nervous fibres again emerge. Scarpa 

 has paid much attention to the fabric of the ganglia, and he gives the follow- 

 ing history of it. He says that the fasciculi of nervous filaments which enter 

 a ganglion are separated and divided from each other, and that they are com- 

 bined anew. A nervous fasciculus entering a ganglion divides into smaller 



