88 THIRD REPORT 18S3. 



IV. The functions of the ganglia, of the great sympatlietic 

 nerve, and its intricate plexuses and anastomotic connexions, are 

 matter, at present, of conjectui'e. Dr. Johnstone, in an Essay 

 on the Use of the Ganglions, published in 1771, has described 

 a few inconclusive experiments on the cardiac nerves. He 

 supposes that " ganglions are the instruments by which the 

 motions of the heart and intestines are rendered uniformly in- 

 voluntary," — a notion which Sir Charles Bell has shown to be to- 

 tally unsound. The best history of opinions, to which indeed 

 our knowledge reduces itself, will be found in the physiological 

 section of Lobstein's work, De Nervi Sympathetici Fabrica, 

 Usu, et Morbis*. 



In the earliest of his communications to the Royal Society, 

 as well as in his last work on the Nervous System ■!-, Sir Charles 

 Bell has maintained the existence of a separate class of nerves, 

 subservient to the regular and the associated actions of respira- 

 tion. The origins of these nerves J "are in a line or series, and 

 from a distinct column of the spinal marrow. Behind the corpus 

 olivare, and anterior to that process, which descends from the 

 cerebellum, called sometimes the corpus restiforme, a convex 

 strip of medullary matter may be observed. From this tract of 

 medullary matter, on the side of the medulla oblongata, arise, in 

 succession from above downwards, the portio dura of the seventh 

 nerve, the glossopharyngeus nerve, the nerve of the par vagum, 

 the nervus ad par vagum accessorius, and, as I imagine, the 

 phrenic and the external respiratory nerves." The fourth pair 

 is also received into the same class. 



This doctrine of an exclusive system of respiratory nerves, 

 associated in function by virtue of an anatomical relation of 

 their roots, has not, as Sir Charles Bell seems himself aware §, 

 received the concurrence of many intelligent physiologists of 

 this counti'y or of the Continent. Mr. Herbert Mayo, in the ad- 

 mirable Essay already referred to, was the first to point out the 

 true relations of the fifth and seventh nerves. He has shown 

 that the muscles of the face, excepting those already enumer- 

 ated, which elevate the lower jaw, receive their motive nerves 

 exclusively from the seventh, and consequently that this nerve 

 must govern all their motions, voluntary as well as respiratory. 

 But Dr. Alison, in his very elaborate paper || " On the Physiolo- 

 gical Principle of Sympathy," has cast considerable doubts on 



* Paris 1823. t 4to, 1830. 



J The Nervous System of the Human Body, p. 129. 'Ito, 1830. 

 § Op. cit., p. 11;'). 



II Transacliom of Oie Medko-chirurykal Socidy of Edinburgh, 1826, vol. ii. 

 p. 165. 



