458 SYMPATHY. 



of the brain or spinal chord of course cannot be requisite, if 

 there is no motion in the sympathy, nor any influence trans- 

 mitted by nerves of voluntary movement. To the individual 

 sympathy between the brain or chord these and their nerves 

 must be indispensable, as in this respect they stand exactly 

 in the condition of all other sympathising parts. When sym- 

 pathetic pain is felt, brain and encephalo-spinal nerves must be 

 required, the latter to communicate and the former to take 

 cognizance of the sympathetic condition of the part in which the 

 sympathetic pain is felt. But this is not an agency of the brain, 

 chord, or encephalo-spinal nerves in sympathy : a sympathetic 

 change first occurs in the part, and this is then felt by the en- 

 cephalo-spinal system. If the ganglionic nerves have the 

 office, assigned to them by so many writers, of giving vital pro- 

 perties to all parts, and not this, authors can hardly suppose 

 that peculiar nerves for sympathy exist, seeing that all the 

 other than the ganglionic are nerves for sense or motion or 

 convey the influence of emotions from the brain : and, should dis- 

 tinct nerves for sympathy exist, I still cannot believe that the 

 ganglionic system is for vitality on account of the reasons given 

 above ; and much less when I consider that its ganglia and nerves 

 contain a large quantity of fibrils from the encephalo-spinal nerves 

 of both sensation and motion ; which very circumstance, I may re- 

 mark, prevents me from believing that the anterior spinal nerves 

 serve for motion only, have no other function* I can conceive that 

 the posterior are for transmission to the brain and chord only, for 

 sensation and for insensible influence, as when something unfelt in the 

 stomach produces hiccup from the irritation being conveyed to the 

 roots of the phrenic nerves : that the posterior are for transmission 

 from the brain and chord ; not however for the transmission of vo- 

 lition only, but of the influence of emotion and of excitement of 

 their roots however induced. If we cannot always explain the oc- 

 currence or absence of sympathy by nervous distribution, we must 

 remember that we are imperfectly acquainted with this. Fibrils 

 often seem to unite which afterwards prove to run side by side only : 

 and, the more knowledge we have, the more distinct do we find the 

 office of individual fibrils. " Often," says Gall, " the different 

 filaments of the same nerve are very visibly different : not only 

 different nerves but also the threads of the same nerve proceed 

 from different ganglia placed in different situations. All the pe- 

 culiarities are the same in the same nerves ; they must therefore 



