THE GREAT SPINAL ORGANIC NERVE. 2G9 
the cord is divided. If that is not the agent, the operation 
ought not to hinder the usual progress of parturition. 
He divided the cord, in another female, between the second 
and third lumbar vertebrae. The pains were much diminished, 
but did not altogether cease, but there was a peculiarity about 
them ; the motion of the flanks at each effort was confined to 
the posterior part of the lumbar region, and all was still anteriorly. 
The animal died on the second day. He then suspected that he 
had not divided the cord sufficiently forward, but that some in- 
fluence from the anterior part had been communicated to the 
womb in a circuitous course ; he therefore operated on another fe- 
male between the second and third dorsal vertebrae. All was 
still as death, and the animal died in twelve hours. 
He divided the cord in another guinea-pig at the last dorsal 
vertebra. The pains ceased. An hour after this operation, he 
prepared his voltaic pile, and established a connexion between 
the anterior portion of the spinal cord and the uterus. The 
pains returned, and in three hours she produced as many little 
ones; but then, worn out by her labour-pains and her other 
sufferings, she died, with five young ones still remaining in her. 
Other guinea-pigs were tortured after parturition, with a view 
to see what effect would be produced on uterine haemorrhage 
and the usual lochial discharges. They were not in the slightest 
degree changed. This was an affair of the ganglial, and not 
the motor organic nerves. 
The Ganglial Nerves. — I will not detain you longer on this 
division of the organic nervous system ; nor will I enter on the 
consideration of that other still more important one, the nutritive, 
and secretory, and absorbent system, for I have little to add to 
that which you will find contained in the 7th volume of The 
Veterinarian. The functions of these nerves have been more 
attentively studied, and more universally understood. The inti- 
mate association of this system with the vascular, the secretory, 
and the assimilating functions, have identified it with the exist- 
ence of health, the cause and progress of disease, and, indeed, 
with all the phenomena of life. 
In the next lecture a disease will, in proper order, come be- 
fore us, that will perhaps not unpleasingly illustrate the true 
character and distinction and working of the different symptoms ; 
— I mean Rabies Canina. 
VOL. x. 
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