44-2 FANCIED FUNCTIONS OF 



Weinhold, say that they succeeded with galvanism in the case of 

 the heart x ; and Dr. Bartels declares that, when he opened the chest 

 of six robbers in 1826, immediately after decapitation near Mar- 

 bourg, he found the heart beat regularly for half an hour, and, 

 when languishing, to be momentarily excited by irritating the 

 great sympathetic, though irritation of the spinal chord had no 

 effect on it, but on the muscles of the trunk, y Dr. Brachet as- 

 serts that, on dividing the cardiac plexus, the action of the heart 

 instantly ceased for ever ; probably, however, from the shock, 

 since the hearts of brutes taken out of the body will beat. 



But let us examine this hypothesis a little farther. Besides the 

 mental faculties of the encephalon, and the transmission of the 

 will from it, and of impressions for sensation to it, by the spinal 

 chord and the nerves of motion and of sense, two other kinds 

 of phenomena remain, one of which possibly, and the other 

 certainly, depends upon the nervous system. The former is the 

 excitability, irritability, vitality, life, or whatever else it is termed, 

 possessed by every part : the other is the various degrees and kinds 

 of sympathy which exist among the different parts of the system, 

 and the influence of the mental feelings upon the body at large, 

 the susceptibility of which influence is but that of sympathy 

 with the encephalon. Now the ganglions and ganglionic nerves 

 must have some function, and, as they are not the organs of the 

 mind, nor concerned in sensation, or volition, the only func- 

 tions which remain are the supply of excitability, the trans- 

 mission of sympathy, and the effects of mental emotions, and the 

 affording a passage to encephalo-spinal filaments of sensation 

 to those parts which do not otherwise receive any ; for every 

 part is capable of sensation in inflammation, and therefore must 

 always have nerves connecting it with the brain, however indi- 

 rectly. The rise and progress of the opinion which gives them 

 the first office are detailed by Dr. Fletcher, who advocates it 

 strongly, and, in addition to the fact of the earlier development 

 of the ganglionic than of the encephalo-spinal system, urges the 

 following arguments. 55 It is more strongly developed in children 

 and females than in the less irritable adult and male. They appear 

 universally distributed. The arteries of the brain and all the 



* Dr. Le Gallois, Experiences sur la Vie. Dr. Brachet,!. c. p. 127. 

 y Dr. Hufeland's Journal, quoted by Dr. Brachet. 



z See Dr. Fletcher's Rudiments of Physiology. Edinb. 1 856. P. ii. a. p. 64. 

 sqq. 



