— i68 — 
The reflex-actions are, as is well known, probably, the primary 
state or the starting point of a great many, if not all, actions (volun- 
tary or unvoluntary.) 
And if reflex movements are produced without direct help of 
the ganglion cells, then there are certainly a great many actions 
which can be produced without any direct assistance from these cells. 
In the same way as above, me may also assume that an 
impression or irritation is conweyed from one part of the central 
nervous system to another, e. g. from the ventral (or spinal) nerve- 
cord to the brain, or vice versa, without any passage through 
ganglion cells; an irritation producing a voluntary action may, thus, 
be conweyed from the brain and into the centrifugal nerve-tubes, 
passing to the active limb, without passing any ganglion cells on the 
way, or without any direct action of the ganglion cells of the ven- 
tral (or spinal) nerve-cord, or of the motoric centre of the limb. 
It is not in our present state of knowledge possible to predict the 
extent of the infiuence this theory, if approved, wiW have an our 
ideas about the function of the nervous system. I will, therefore, 
by no means attempt to trace it here, but will subsepuently return 
to the ganglion cells, and examine what functions there may be 
left for them, for certainly we ca inot one moment doubt that they 
are of great importance to the nervous system. 
A function which I suppose they have, and which certainly is 
a very important one, is to serve as nutritive centres of this nerve- 
tubes and fibrillæ originating in them, We have, before, seen, that 
the protoplasmic processes have probably a nutritive function and 
absorb nutrition, for the cell, in the periphery of the ganglia (or nerve- 
cords) or near the walls of the blood-vessels ; now, I think it is probable 
that this nutrition is not meant to be for the cell only, but that it is 
assimilated by the protoplasm of the cell (the nucleus has probably 
an important function in this respect) and is, in a suitable form, 
carried on into the primitive tubes of the nervous processes; in 
other words, the ganglion cells are the nutritive centres of the ner- 
vous processes, and then probably also of the branches and nerve- 
tubes arising from these processes. ') We know of what great impor- 
tance nutrition is for the nervous system; it is very peculiar, in 
1) Those ganglion cells, from which the motoric nerve-tubes directly issue, 
are the nutritive centres of these tubes; whilst those ganglion cells, the nervous 
process of which are entirely broken up into slender branches, are the nutritive 
centres of these branches (which contribute to the formation of the dotted substance). 
