494 Canadian Record of Science. 



ment or my own results as detailed in my paper on the 

 Alligator and the Fish, I am unable to believe. 



When Hall stated his belief that the sympathetic was a 

 channel for influences that may lessen the heart's action,- 

 he reached, I believe, a new truth. In my paper on 

 the Terrapin, 1 I called attention, for the first time, to 

 certain peculiar and hitherto unobserved phenomena, that 

 I then felt must lead out to something of importance. 

 If G-askell's 2 conclusions turn out correct as to the 

 physiological character of certain different kinds of nerve 

 fibres, then my previous statement that "the vagus is 

 a sympathetic with inhibitory fibres; the sympathetic a 

 vagus without these fibres, if indeed it be wholly without 

 them (a point I have suggested previously as not yet to be 

 considered settled)," 3 maybe considered the first announce- 

 ment in distinct form, in a published paper, of a doctrine 

 likely to be soon established on a firm anatomical and phy- 

 siological basis. But yet it must be admitted that the 

 genius of Marshall Hall was the first to penetrate the dark- 

 ness. At the time of writing the above, I was unaware of 

 his suggestion as to the influence of the sympathetic -over 

 the heart. If it be true that certain fibres running in the 

 sympathetic system have the effect of first increasing meta- 

 bolic action, thus leading to exalted functional activity 

 followed by exhaustion, then certain results of stimulation 

 pointed out by me in my papers on the Terrapin and 

 the Fish, become clearer, though not, perhaps, fully 

 explained, e.g. acceleration followed by slowing on stimula- 

 tion of various parts of the body, even with the whole brain 

 destroyed. 



Faradization of the Heart. — The results of this method of 

 stimulation may be stated somewhat briefly, as, in the 

 main, they correspond with what I have found in the other 

 animals experimented upon. The results vary much with 

 the strength of the current used, but especially with the 

 functional condition of the heart at the time. When 



1 Journal of Physiology, vol. vi., p. 271, 283, etc. 



2 Journal of Physiology, vol. vii., No. 1. 



3 Op. at., p. 383. 



