465 
THE GREAT ORGANIC NERVE. 
exchange of fibres ;—one through the medium of the subocci- 
pital cranglion, and the other within the foramen lacerum. # 
It is the Head or Source oj the 'Serve . I cannot, then, bung 
myself to believe that it springs from the fifth and sixth pairs, 
or that it is a collection of branches from them, and, by-and-by, 
from almost every nerve of the frame. A minute dissection of 
these communications will prove, that there was a nerve pre¬ 
viously existing with which the others anastomose ; and that it 
is not one nerve giving origin to the other, but a fair interchange 
of fibrils and of influence for some important purpose.. Both the 
fifth and the sixth nerves receive as much as they give : I am 
therefore disposed to regard this ganglion as the commencement 
of the great organic nerve. I feel a difficulty about it. Gan¬ 
glions are generally found in the course of nerves, and do not 
form their head or source. This is an unique instance of a gan¬ 
glion constituting the origin, although perhaps we have some¬ 
thing like it in the origin of the organic motor nerves from that 
rounded, ganglion-shaped portion of medullary matter, the coipus 
olivare. There needs some master mind to give us a compre¬ 
hensive and satisfactory view of this portion of the organic 
system. It would be worthy of that great physiologist to 
whom we already owe so much, and a noble completion of his 
labours. , . 
The Course and Ramifications oj the Great Organic Serve. 
I will then suppose that this ganglion is the head or commence¬ 
ment of the great organic nerve. There ate, fiist, its ramifications 
to the suboccipital ganglion, and thence to all its wide con¬ 
nexions. There is the branch which enters the cranium through 
the foramen lacerum ; as it passes through, a filament is given 
to the cavity of the tympanum, and so to the seventh pan (the 
portio dura), and also to the cerebro-visceral; and, still climb¬ 
ing up, I have said that it forms a plexus or ganglion or both. It 
is a firm body, but enveloped with a mesh work of nervous fibrils, 
a rete mirabile , covering the carotid artery, and where it has the 
communication which I have described with the sixth, and 
whence proceed several other little filaments to the fifth. We 
no sooner begin to trace the ganglion, and the neive in which it 
terminates, than we are made aware of that which gave it the 
name of the great sympathetic: it is connecting itself with 
everything; we can trace it to the laryngeal branch of the spino- 
cerebral, the glosso-pharyngeus, the spinal accessory, the first 
and the second cervical. In fact, we shall find that it commu¬ 
nicates with every nerve by which it passes, and exchanges fibres 
with each—it gives fibres to and receives them from both roots, 
but chiefly the motor root. 
