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VETERA ET NOVA
OR
EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF A
MEDICAL PRACTITIONER
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
PHYSIC & METAPHYSICS
STUDIES AND ESSAYS BY
THOMAS LOGAN, M.D.
LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL FACULTY OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS
OF GLASGOW
EDITED BY
QUINTIN MCLENNAN, M.B., Ch.M.
SURGEON, GLASGOW ROYAL INFIRMARY ; FORMERLY EXTRA-HONORARY SURGEON
ROYAL HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN, GLASGOW ; MEDICAL EXAMINER
FRENCH, SPANISH, RUSSIAN AND ITALIAN CONSULATES J EXTRA
MEDICAL EXAMINER FOR BOARD OF TRADE, ETC.
AND
P. HENDERSON AITKEN, M.A., B.Sc, D.Litt.
VOL. I.
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Circulatio Circulationum omnia Ciradatio
LONDON
H. K. LEWIS, 136, GOWER STREET
1910
Glasgow: printed at the university press
by robert maclehose and co. ltd.
QH5i
v. I
| 9 10
TO THE MEMBERS OF
THE WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY
GRADUATES ASSOCIATION, OF WHICH DR. LOGAN
WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT
AND
IN MEMORY OF THE LATE
SIR THOMAS GALBRAITH LOGAN, K.C.B.,
DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF BRITISH ARMY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT,
AND THE LATE
DRS. CHARLES SMITH
(UNCLE AND NEPHEW), NATIVES OF GIRVAN, AYRSHIRE,
AND FORMERLY MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS IN
NEWTON-STEWART, WIGTONSHIRE
G41
NOTE
The late Dr. Thomas Logan was born at Bargenoch, in
the parish of Coylton, Ayrshire, and received his primary
education there from the late Mr. John Smith, parochial
schoolmaster, who was also the teacher of that Scottish
genius the late George Douglas Brown, author of the
House with the Green Shutters.
He then passed to Anderson's College, Glasgow, and
received his Clinical training at the Royal Infirmary.
He always retained a high appreciation for all his old
Professors, to whom he was indebted for so much. In
due time, after examination, he got his license to practise
from the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of
that city. He then entered the University of Aberdeen,
and after several years of study he graduated M.D. there.
Afterwards he was appointed House-Surgeon to Paisley
Infirmary, and after spending a short time in that insti-
tution went to general practice in the south of Scotland,
and then to Yorkshire, where he spent the rest of his
life. All through his professional career he was busily
engaged as a general practitioner and public health officer.
He had the true scientific spirit, and was a great
student till the end of his days, and was very well in-
formed in geology, astronomy, and general literature.
He was for many years a regular attender at all meetings
of the British Medical Association, the International
Congresses, and those of the British Association.
vii
647
Vlll
NOTE
He travelled much, having visited nearly all the
European capitals, besides travelling a great deal in
America, and thus by means of his extensive and acute
observation added greatly to his scientific and general
knowledge. He was a man of splendid physique and of
profound intellect, and satisfied his own mind on all topics
in which he was interested. He was for long engaged in
the work now presented, and it was his intention to see
it through the press ; but unfortunately he was overtaken
by a fatal illness, and in consequence this duty fell into
other hands. He died at Harrogate in September, 1907,
at the age of sixty-nine years. He was unmarried.
His MS. passed into the hands of his trustees, Alex-
ander Gemmell, banker, Bradford, and Dr. Quintin
M'Lennan, Glasgow, and but for the prolonged illness of
the latter, the work would have been issued long ago.
After a great deal of care, work, and anxiety on the part
of his trustees it has now been completed.
Dr. M'Lennan, who has had a deep interest in it all
along, and knew Dr. Logan's views with regard to it, had
the great satisfaction and good fortune of having his
friend, Dr. P. Henderson Aitken, of Oxford, as co-editor.
They have done their part of the work to the best of their
ability, and in accordance with Dr. Logan's strict wishes
and instructions. No alterations or excisions of any of
the text were permitted, and his wishes in that respect
have been rigidly observed. Here the trustees' responsi-
bility ceases, and the work is now put into the hands of
the medical profession by them, in the hope that it will be
cordially received.
The Editors have to express their indebtedness to
Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., Messrs. Macmillan &
Co. Ltd., and the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for assistance
by the loan of illustrations which the author had selected
for this work.
NOTE ix
Dr. Logan was a very highly esteemed member of the
profession, and a man of lofty ideals and high personal
character, and was beloved wherever he was known.
He now lies in the quiet churchyard of Coylton, in the
burying-ground of his forefathers, which nestles at the
foot of the Craigs o' Kyle, and in the very centre of
the Burns country.
Dr. Logan was in active practice for well-nigh half a
century, and before retiring received a public recognition
of his professional ability and personal worth at the hands
of the merchants and medical gentlemen of Bradford and
neighbourhood.
PREFACE
Vetera et Nova, or ' Old and New,' fitly describes the
character of the following pages and the materials used
in their production, as well as the results arrived at in
the way of constructive effort by the re-arrangement
of them on lines dictated by re-interpretation of their
individual and combined meaning when viewed apart
and when placed in fresh relationships. The ' old '
has thus been used to construct the c new/ and whether
the result may turn out a success remains to be seen,
and whether so much fault-finding has been justified
remains to be tested by the application to it of the
usual canons of criticism and practical application of it
to everyday requirements of those engaged theoretically
or practically in working the departments of knowledge
involved in the subjects dealt with.
No department of knowledge can remain stationary
intrinsically, and much less so when regarded as an indis-
pensable part of universal knowledge ; it must therefore
move forwards or backwards in obedience to forces work-
ing from within, and be moved from without according
to its specific position in the great commonwealth of
knowledge and the general alteration in relationship
to its various departments. In the latter respect — the
department of biological physics, it seems to us, has not
changed its position to the extent that the movements
of some of its later offshoots require in order that the
Xll
PREFACE
symmetry should be preserved and that there should
be no retardation of the general progress ; for example,
physiology is shooting ahead of anatomy ; pathology is
fast overtaking physiology, and some of the later develop-
ments, such as bacteriology and hygiene, threaten to
overrun and asphyxiate the foundation sciences from
which they have sprung, and on which they still rely
for support and encouragement.
The following pages, regarded as a contribution towards
the rectification of this disproportionate progress, will, we
hope, not be without some slight value, and, at any rate,
that they will justify their submission to the republic
of Science as an example of an always needed effort
to widen and deepen the foundation of the great struc-
ture of knowledge — biological, medical, and metaphysical.
These ' Extracts from the Diary of a Medical
Practitioner' were not originally intended for publication.
They consequently bear no impress of effort at continuity
of detail or treatment, or of closely reasoned and con-
secutive arrangement of subject, but have been grouped
or classified and loosely thrown together somewhat in
the chronological order of that original production, and
as one subject suggested another, in easy and irregular
sequence, during the course of many years.
Constituting thus but a series of fragments of asym-
metrical proportions, and differing much in their degree
of elaboration, they nevertheless lend themselves to a
' mosaic arrangement ' and c scientific disposition ' in such
a manner that a 'definite pattern' may become the
ultimate result.
The bibliography involved in their production and
elaboration, and the assignment of indebtedness for sug-
gestions and ideas are now, we regret to say, impossible
tasks, inasmuch as the c weft and the woof of their
texture have been the product of daily reading, observa-
PREFACE xiii
tion, reflection, and more or less severe study. Suffice
it, therefore, to say that the original teaching which it
was our privilege to obtain, the information we derived
from the perusal of text-books and works of reference,
as well as the ordinary c serial literature of the period/
and the personal opportunities of gaining knowledge ' at
first hand ' which we have enjoyed, have been the source
from which any truths they may contain were elaborated.
For our indebtedness to all these ' non-personal ' sources
of knowledge, therefore, we take the opportunity of ex-
pressing our warmest thanks, and our sincerest apologies
for our inability to mention individual names.
Moreover, we are well aware and are bound to acknow-
ledge that, but for ■ these non-personal ' sources of
information and the opportunities they have given of
daily ' piecing together ' the materials they supplied, it
would have been altogether impossible for us to have
systematised the facts and deduced the views which we
have now, however imperfectly, ventured to put before
those capable of appraising their scientific value and
their practical bearings.
THOMAS LOGAN.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction ________ j
The Primary Division of the Physical, or Organic,
Elements of the Living Body into Protoplasm, or
Bioplasm, and Lymph - - - - - -14
The Primary Division of the Constituents of the Living
Body — {Continued) - - - - - - -19
On Cerebro-Spinal, or Neural, and Haemal Lymph in
comparison with each other, and in their mutual
relationships --------25
Circulation generally, as it is to be met with in the
Human Body and in the Economy of Life 35
On the Minutely Particular, or Nutritional, and Metabolic
Circulation ______ - - 42
Circulation as all-pervading throughout the Human
Body ---___-__ 52
Choroid Plexuses, and Pia Mater generally, as the
Secretive Organs of the Cerebro-Spinal Fluid - - 55
A New Departure in Neurology, or an attempt at the
Solution of some Neurological Problems - - - 61
Cerebro-Spinal Lymph Circulation and Excretion - - 68
b xv
xvi CONTENTS
Nervine, or Neuronic, Secretion, and Intra-Fibral Circula-
tion of the White, or Medullary, and the Axis
Cylinder Substances, and on the Structure of Systemic
Nerve Fibres, with the " Nodes of Ranvier " - - 77
Circulation in its general Nervine Bearings, and " Circulatio
circulationum omnia circulatio " - - - - -88
On the Organs of Neural Excretion 94
The Posterior or Coccygeal Glandulature and Exit
from the Cerebro-Spinal Lymph Cavity - - - 105
The Circulation and Excretion of the Cerebro-Spinal
Fluid - - - - - - - - -no
The Lesser Cerebro-Spinal Lymph Excretory Mechanisms,
Otic, Optic, and others- - - - - - 119
Enumeration of the Mechanisms concerned in the Elimina-
tion of Cerebro-Spinal Lymph - - - - 132
Sensory Disturbances, or ^Esthetic Phenomena, occur-
ring at, and around, the Points of Exit of the
Cerebro-Spinal Lymph, antecedent to, and during,
Excretion - - - - - - - -I35
The Drainage Areas of the Skull and Brain - - - 139
The general Bearings, and Role, of the Haemal Lymph
and the Cerebro-Spinal Fluid - - - - - 148
The Role of the Cerebro-Spinal Fluid and Lymph proper 153
Summary of Studies on Circulation - - - - 157
The Physical Law, or Property, of Matter, known as
Inertia - - - - - - - - -158
Nutrition, and Metabolism, of the Systemic Nervous
System, or Systemic Nervine Nutrition » - - 170
On Circulation, and Nutrition, of, and by, the Sympathetic
Nervous System ----- Jt- - 174
CONTENTS xvii
PAGE
On the occurrence of Vacua in the Organic, or Metabolic,
Work of the Human Body, and on " Suction "
Evacuation, and Gravitation, in relation thereto, or
the Dynamics of Circulation - - - - 182
Secretion, and Excretion — so called Secretion- - - 191
Excretion __-_--__- 198
Glandular Structures, or Adenography generally - - 20 1
The Phenomena of u Skin Marking " and Skin Exfolia-
tion, Epidermic " Shedding," or Solid Excretion - 205
On the Stages of Evolution of the Human Organism,
divided into Uni-cellular, Blasto-dermic, or Multi-
cellular, Neur-enteric, and Viscero-Skeletal - - 214
The Developmental Evolution of the Human Organism - 229
On the Notochord, as a Skeletal Evolutionary Factor - 242
Ossification, and the Skeleton - - - - - 255
Lignification in Plants as compared with Ossification in
the Human Organism - - - - - -261
Embryonic Differentiation, or Division and Reunion, of
the Neur-enteric Canal, with some account of the
Alimentary Canal and the process of Digestion - 263
The Sigmoid Flexure of the Colon - - - - 278
On the Neuroglia, and how, and when, the Elements of
the Ingesta become alive _____ 283
On the Cell, in its general bearings on the Evolution of
Living Forms _______ 299
The Cell, in some of its Intrinsic, Individual, and
Communal, aspects, and in the Genesis of the
Nervous System ___-_-_ 305
The growth of the Systemic Nerve Cell, and what
follows. With Neuro-Psychic Genesis - - -311
PAGE
xviii CONTENTS
On the Psychic, or Mental, Brain Cells - 322
On the Psychic or Mental Brain Cells - 326
The Neurons, generally ------ 329
The Neuron, or Nerve Unit - 334
Neurogenesis, or Neuronogenesis ----- 340
Neuronogenesis, or Neural Histogenesis, and Neural
Nutrition --._____
342
On what is signified by the expression — "The Nervous
System," in connection with Life, Nutrition, and
Vital Results - - - - - - -351
The Evolution of the Systemic Nervous System - - 354
On the Evolution of the Common Nervous System —
Sympathetic and Systemic - 359
The Distinctness, and Relationships, of the two
Nervous Systems in Structure, and Function - - 363
What Distinctness of the Systemic Nervous System
implies --------- 368
What the Distinctness, and Relationships, of the Nervous
Systems lead to- - - - - - - 371
On the division of the "Neural Work" as exemplified
in " The Nervous System " in its respective parts of
Sympathetic and Systemic - - - - -376
The Combination of Sympathetic and Systemic Muscular
Innervation -------- 387
The Principle of Reciprocity between the Sympathetic
and Systemic Nervous Systems - 390
Nervine Secretion and Excretion ----- 394
On the Development of some of the Organs of Sense, and
the manner of Arrangement and Distribution of the
Cerebral and Spinal Meninges at the openings of
exit of the Cerebro-spinal Cavity - - - - 397
CONTENTS xix
PAGE
On the relative proportions of the Grey and White
Matter of the Brain and Cord, and the manner of
Union between the Sensory and Motor and the
Psychic Neurons ------- 402
On some Views of the Structure and Functions of the
Sympathetic Nervous System — including Nervine
Nutrition and Nerve Force Equilibration - - - 410
The completed Sympathetico-Systemic Nervous System - 419
Structure and Function as observed in the Human
Body — par excellence - - - - - -421
Nerve Force, or Energy ______ 424
Physiological Phenomenon connected with the Initiation
and Transmission of Nerve Impulse through, or by,
the Nerve Terminals - - - - - -427
Is there such a thing as Neurolysis, and is it akin to
Electrolysis ?- - - - - - - - 429
Physico-Metaphysical — On Life - - - - - 431
On Life — (continued) - - - - - - -435
Life — What is it ? and when does it begin ? - - - 439
Life. What is it ? - - - - - - - 448
Hunger and Thirst _______ 450
Food and Drink - - - - - - - -455
The Physiological Nature and Import of the Actions of
Yawning, Stretching, and Sneezing, etc.- - - 457
The Nature of Blushing, Flushing, and Blanching of the
Human "Cheek" and Skin _____ 465
On Metamorphism _______ 460,
xx CONTENTS
PAGE
Materio-Dynamic Parallelism, or Organic Co-Evolution
and -Involution of Tissue, Organ, and Function, as
a Normal Mode of Development, or Growth and
Decay ........ - - - 473
The Physiological Process known as "Ageing," or
Involution - - ■ - - - - - -481
Body Temperature - - - - - - -491
Sleep ---------- 498
The Blood — What is it ? and what does it do ? - - 505
Respiration, Pulmonary and Cephalic - - - - 510
Respiration, and Atmospheric Air - - - - -516
The Osseous Coverings of the Central Nervous
System - - - - - - - - -521
The Meningeal Coverings of the Brain and Spinal
Cord --------- 523
Circulation of the Blood within the Head - - - 527
"Pneumatic Spaces" of the Head and Face, and the
Olfactory Nerves and Mucosa - - - - - 530
Lachrymal Glands - - - - - - ~534
Roof and Floor of the Mouth, and the Tongue - - 5 36
The Tongue, and what it indicates to the Clinician - 542
On the Perineal Raphe" in the Male - 547
On the Phenomenon of Ciliary Movement in the Cir-
culation of Cerebro-Spinal Lymph, and of Air and
Material Particles in the Lungs - - - - 551
On some of the Salient Points and Departures from
Accepted Teaching involved in the foregoing Views:
Circulation -------- 555
CONTENTS xxi
PAGE
Some Deductions from the foregoing Studies in their
broad and general bearings : Nutrition, Innervation,
etc. - - - - - - - - -561
Some Thoughts on the general Practical Bearings of the
foregoing Extracts, and on the Unity of Theory and
Practice ________ 5-4
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
i. The Lateral Ventricles opened by removal of the middle
part of the Corpus Callosum, and the Descending Cornu
exposed on the right side - - - - - -56
2. View of the Upper Surface of the Velum Interpositum,
Choroid Plexuses, and Corpora Striata - - 57
3. Transverse Section through the Brain and Skull made whilst
frozen _-_-_____ 69
4. The Cranium opened to show the Falx of the Cerebrum
and Tentorium of the Cerebellum, and the Places of
Exit of the Cranial Nerves _____ 70
5. Section of the Spinal Cord within its Membranes (Upper
Dorsal Region) - - - - - - - -71
6. Section of the posterior and lower parts of the Brain
within the Skull, to exhibit the Subarachnoid Space
and its relation to the Ventricles - - - - 72
7. Two portions of Medullated Nerve Fibres, after treatment
with Osmic Acid, showing the Axis-Cylinder, and the
Medullary and Primitive Sheaths - - - 73
8. Part of an Axis-Cylinder, highly magnified, showing the
Varicose Fibrils composing it- - - - "73
9. Varicose Medullated Fibres from the Root of a Spinal
Nerve _--_.-_-_ 74.
10. B, Diagram to show the parts of a Medullated Fibre - 74
11. Right half of the Brain divided by a vertical Antero-
posterior Section - - - - - - - 75
xxiii
xxiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
12. View of the Anterior Surface of the Pons Varolii and
Medulla Oblongata, with a small particle of Cord attached 78
13. Section of the upper part of the Brain and Meninges to
show the relations of the Arachnoidal Villi 79
14. Base of the Brain with the origins of the Cerebral Nerves 80
15. Magnified view of a Sweat Gland, with its Duct - - 81
16. Developing Sweat Glands from a seven months' Foetus - 81
17. Nerve-ending in Muscular Fibre of a Lizard, according
to Kiihne --------- 82
18. Termination of a Nerve in a Muscular Fibre of the
Lizard -------.-83
19. Part of a Section of one of the Funiculi of the Sciatic
Nerve of Man ------.-84
20. A small Bundle of Nerve Fibres from the Sympathetic
Nerve ---------85
21. Nerve-Fibres stained with Nitrate of Silver to show From-
mann's Markings in the Axis-Cylinder - - 87
22. Ramified Nerve-Cell from Anterior Cornu of Spinal Cord
of Man ---------89
23. Small Branch of a Muscular Nerve of the Frog, near its
termination, showing divisions of the Fibres - - 91
24. Section through the place of exit of a Spinal Nerve-Root
through the Dura Mater ------ 93
25. Transverse Vertical Section of the Nasal Fossae seen from
behind _.-_--_-- 95
26. Nerves of the Outer Wall of the Nasal Fossae - - 96
27. Nerve-Fibres from the Olfactory Mucous Membrane - 97
28. Nerves of the Septum Nasi, seen from the right side - 98
29. Right half of the Encephalic Peduncle and Cerebellum as
seen from the inside of a Median Section 99
30. Vertical Section of the Head in Early Embryoes of the
Rabbit --------- 100
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxv
FIG. **AGE
31. Side View of the Head of an Embryo-Chick of the third
day ---------- 101
32. Vertical Section of the Infundibulum and Pituitary Diver-
ticulum in the Rabbit's Embryo, after the opening of
the Fauces - - - - - - - -101
33. Brain and Spinal Cord of a Foetus of four months, seen
from behind - - - - - - - -102
$
34. Sagittal Section of the Pituitary Body and Infundibulum
with the adjoining part of the 3rd Ventricle - - 103
35. View from below of the Cartilaginous Base of the Cranium
with its Ossific Centres in a Human Foetus of about
four months - - - - - - - -103
36. The Lower or Cartilaginous part of the Cranium of a
Chick of the sixth day - - - - - - 104
37. Plan of the Skull, etc., of the Embryo Pig, seen from
below - - - - - - - - -106
38. Posterior View of the Medulla Oblongata and of the
Spinal Cord with its Coverings and the Roots of the
Nerves - - - - - - - - -107
39. Posterior View of the Lower End of the Spinal Cord with
the Cauda Equina and Sheath - - - - 108
40. A, Two Tactile Cells in the deeper part of the Human
Epidermis. B, Ending of Nerves in Tactile Discs in
the Pig's Snout - - - - - - -113
41. Superficial Muscles of the Perineum in the Male - - 114
42. Diagrammatic sketch from behind of the Roots of the Ninth,
Tenth, and Eleventh Nerves, with their Ganglia and
Communications - - - - - - -120
43. Diagrammatic view from before of the parts composing
the Organ of Hearing of the Left Side - - - 121
44. Plan of the Right Membranous Labyrinth viewed from the
Mesial aspect - - - - - - - -122
45. Membranous Labyrinth and Nervous Twigs detached - 122
xxvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
46. Diagram of the Right Adult Human Eye, divided nearly
horizontally through the middle - - - - - 123
47. Vertical Section of the Left Orbit and its contents - 124
48. Meibomian Glands of the Left Eyelids as seen from behind 125
49. Front of the Left Eyelids with the Lachrymal Canals and
Nasal Duct exposed - - - - - - -126
50. Semi-diagrammatic Views of the Inner Surface of the Right
Cerebral Hemisphere of the Foetal Brain at various stages
of development - - - - - - - -126
51. View of the Inner Surface of the right half of the Foetal
Brain of about six months - - - - - 127
52. Transverse Section through the Brain of a Sheep's Embryo
of 2.7 cm. in length - - - - - 127
53. Sketch of a Superficial Dissection of the Face, showing the
position of the Parotid and Submaxillary Glands - 128
54. View of the Right Submaxillary and Sublingual Glands
from the inside _______
129
55. Diagram of the Roots and Anastomosing Branches of the
Pneumo-Gastric and neighbouring Nerves . - - 130
56. Internal Base of the Skull - - - - - 140
57. External Base of the Skull shown in Figure 56 - - 141
58. Outline of a Longitudinal Section through the Brain of a
Chick of ten days ------- 14.2
59. Sections showing the general relations of the Spinal Cord
to the inclosing Theca, and of this to the Vertebral Canal 143
60. View of the Cerebro-Spinal Axis - - - - - 144
61. Anterior and Posterior views of the Medulla Oblongata and
Spinal Cord with Sections ------ 144
62. Section of Epidermis from the Human Hand - - 166
63. A, Two Tactile Cells in the deeper part of the Human
Epidermis. B, Ending of Nerves in Tactile Discs in
the Pig's Snout - - - - - - -167
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxvii
FIG. PAGE
64. Part of the Reticulum from the Spinal Cord - -168
65. Section of the Internal Saphenous Nerve (Human), made
after being stained in Osmic Acid and subsequently
hardened in Alcohol - - - - - - -169
66. Two Nerve-Cells from the Cortical Grey Matter of the
Cerebellum - - - - - - - -171.
6j. Capillary Vessels of Muscle - - - - - - 190
68. Front view of the Right Kidney and Suprarenal Body of
a Full-Grown Foetus ------- 202
69. Section of the Suprarenal Body ----- 202
70. Magnified view of four of the Ridges of the Epidermis, with
short Furrows or Notches across them : also the Openings
of the Sudoriferous Ducts ------ 209
71. Compound Papillae from the Palm of the Hand - - 211
72. Diagram of an Animal Cell much magnified - - - 214
73. Striated Epithelium Cell, from the Duct of a Salivary
Gland; highly magnified. Semi-diagrammatic - - 214
74. A Cartilage Cell of the Salamander, showing fine Filaments
in the Protoplasm - - - - - - -215
75. Diagram of an Animal Cell (with two Nuclei) - - 215
76. First stages of Segmentation of a Mammalian Ovum ; semi-
diagrammatic - - - - - - - -216
77. Sections of the Ovum of the Rabbit during the later stages
of Segmentation, showing the formation of the Blastodermic
Vesicle - - - - - - - - -217
78. A, Section through part of a Bilaminar Blastoderm of the
Cat - - - - - - - - - - 218
79. Embryonic Area, with outline of the Vascular Area, from
a Rabbit's Ovum of seven days - - - - - 220
80. Dorsal view of a Blastoderm and Embryo Chick having
five Mesoblastic Somites - - - - - -221
81. Transverse section through the Embryo of the Chick and
Blastoderm at the end of the first day - - - 221
xxviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
82. Transverse section of an Embryo Chick in the latter half
of the second day, at the place where the Vertebral
Somites cease - - - - - - - -222
83. Transverse section through the Embryo of the Chick and
Blastoderm on the second day - - - - -222
84. Diagrammatic longitudinal sections of Elasmobranch Embryo
and Blastoderm - - - - - - -223
85. Diagrammatic longitudinal section of an Embryo of Lacerta 223
86. Outlines showing the relation of the Axis of the Embryo to
the Ovum in Birds and Mammals - - - - 224
87. Outline of the Embryo-Chick at the end of the third day,
to show the inflections of the Body and the commence-
ment of the Limbs - - - - - - -225
88. Ovum of the Rabbit from the Fallopian Tube, twelve hours
after impregnation - - - - - - -229
89. Front and side views of an early Human Ovum four times
the natural size - - - - - - -229
90. Human Ovum of 12 to 13 days - - - - - 230
91. Human Ovum and Embryo of about 14 days - - 230
92. First stages of Segmentation of a Mammalian Ovum; semi-
diagrammatic - - - - - - - -231
93. Sections of the Ovum of the Rabbit during the later stages
of Segmentation, showing the formation of the Blastodermic
Vesicle - - - - - - - - -232
94. Pyriform transparent area of the Chicks Blastoderm with
the Primitive Groove- - - - - -. -233
95. Embryonic area from the Ovum of a Rabbit of eight days 233
96. Surface view of the transparent area of a Blastoderm of
18 hours, somewhat diagrammatic - 234
97. Brain and Spinal Cord exposed from behind in a Foetus of
three months - - - - - - - _235
98. Lateral view of the Brain of an Embryo Calf of 5 cm. - 236
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxix
FIG. PAGE
99. Brain of the Human Embryo of three months. Natural size 236
100. The Anterior Wall of the Pharynx with its Orifices, seen
from behind - - - - - - - -239
1 01. Cervical part of the Primitive Vertebral Column and
adjacent parts of an Embryo Chick of the sixth day,
showing the division of the Vertebral Segments - - 243
102. Transverse section of early Embryo of Pristiurus (Elasmo-
branchs) --------- 243
103. Transverse section of an Embryo Rabbit of 9 days and
2 hours in the middle Dorsal region - 244
104. Sections of the Vertebral Column of a Human Foetus of
eight weeks -------- 245
105. Diagram to show the position of the enlargements of the
Notochord in passing through the Vertebral Column - 246
106. White Fibro-Cartilage from an Intervertebral Disk.
(Human) --------- 247
107. Ideal plan of the multiplication of Cells of Cartilage - 256
108. Division of a Cartilage Cell - - - - -256
109. Parietal Bone of an Embryo Sheep - - - - 257
1 10. Transverse Section of Compact Tissue (of Humerus) - 258
in. A Bone-Cell isolated and highly magnified - - - 259
112. Median Section of the Mouth and Pharynx - - 266
113. Diagram of the Abdominal Part of the Alimentary Canal 267
1 14. Portion of Small Intestine laid open to show the Valvulas
Conniventes -------- 270
115. View of the Ileo-Colic Valve from the Large Intestine- 271
116. Vertical Section of the Pelvis and its Viscera in the Male - 273
117. The Cranium opened to show the Falx of the Cerebrum
and Tentorium of the Cerebellum, and the places of
exit of the Cranial Nerves ------ 284
xxx LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
1 1 8. Two Nerve-Cells from the Cortical Grey Matter of the
Cerebellum - - - - - - - -285
119. Part of the Reticulum from the Spinal Cord - - 285
120. View of the Cerebro-Spinal Axis - 292
I ai. Anterior and Posterior Views of the Medulla Oblongata
and Spinal Cord with Sections ----- 292
122. B, Diagram to show the parts of a Medullated Fibre - 294
123. Multinucleated Cells from the Marrow - 300
124. Three Cells from Early Embryo of the Cat- - - 301
125. Ovum of the Cat - - - - - - -301
126. Stages in the Division of the Ovum or Egg-Cell of a
Worm -----_-__ ^02
127. Upper Surface of the Brain showing the Convolutions - 303
128. Section of Epidermis from the Human Hand - - 312
129. Longitudinal Section through the Head of an Embryo
of four weeks -------- 398
130. Orbital Surface of the Frontal Lobe, and Island of Reil 400
131. Different views of a portion of the Spinal Cord from the
Cervical Region with the Roots of the Nerves - - 408
132. Papillary Surface of the Tongue, with the Fauces and
Tonsils --------- 538
133. Longitudinal Vertical Section of the Tongue, Lip, etc. - 540
-;:.' ::c 647
INTRODUCTION; V \ "\
f ' J *■ • J '■*
i ■> » *
To begin with, the phrase : Circulatio circulationum omnia
circulation the sub-title of the following extracts, requires
a few words of reference or explanation. After many
years of observation and experience, and more or less
consecutive thinking and study, the truth of the above
generalisation has become more firmly and deeply im-
pressed on our mind, and, after every attempt to prove
its untruth and its non-applicability as an instrument of
research, and a physico-biological principle around which
can be grouped, or on which can be threaded, the fragments
of scientific truth as they have become available, has
failed, we have been compelled to admit its adaptability
to these purposes, and to take advantage of its services
in enabling us to advance from position to position, and
to maintain the continuity and cohesion of the course we
have pursued.
Circulation, as a materio-dynamic principle, is as wide as
the universe, and as all-embracing as the laws of evolution
and involution — matter, energy, and mind being alike
subject to its operation, and conforming to its "manners
and methods" in all their manifold manifestations, while
the working of the entire mechanism of nature, so far as
the understanding of a fractional portion of it warrants the
assumption, is alone possible on the plan from which this
principle derives its title. Thus, every molecule of matter,
every unit of energy, and every thought of mind, follow
each other in endless procession or circulation onwards and
onwards, in undeviating order and succession, one giving
place to the other, to the obviation of stasis, retrogression,
confusion, friction, or concussion, in the maintenance of
2 BIOXpQI€AL PHYSICS
progression and order ; wit He if, peradventure, there should
have arisen seeming, contradictions to this mode of pro-
gression and orfier\ a'. subsidiary or tangential mode of
progress or circulation has been secured by the working
of the correlated 'circulations, whereby the apparently lost
order has been ultimately regained or restored ; and so
the general progress has gone on, disturbed only by these
apparent or seeming Obstacles to the all-embracing opera-
tion of the law>\of'£fyeulation, proving that there exist in
nature after alL" wheels within wheels" and circles within
circles, while there k is continuous progress. The law of
circulation thus implies the existence of "perpetual
motion" within the universe, and, therefore, contradicts
one half of the physical property or law of inertia, or that
half of the law which does not come under the all-
embracing necessity of perpetual motion within the confines
of the realisable universe of matter and energy, space and
time (vide Extract on the Law of Inertia).
When applied, as a key, to unlock some of the secrets
of organic circulation within the living human and every
other body, this principle affords a means whereby it can
be discovered that the phenomena of life, and all that that
phrase implies, are but illustrations in detail of the uni-
versality of its existence and working, and modifications
of its "manners and methods"; while, as a working
theory, it seems possible to apply it as successfully in
elucidating the deep problems which lie at the debatable
point of the fusion into one entity of matter and energy,
and of the "thousand and one" transcendental problems
which ever continue to appear immediately ahead of the
pioneers of science and knowledge in all its departments.
By its aid anything of value in the following pages has
been evolved and, more or less, elaborated in illustration
of its practical working ; and to it is due any success which
has been accomplished, and any value that may resist the
application of criticism, as well as the practical use of any
true teaching they may contain. Thus, in its application
to the elucidation of the problems of life or vitality in
their unicellular and multicellular manifestations, in their
textural and visceral developments, as well as in their
neuro - musculo - skeletal and physiologico - psychological
INTRODUCTION 3
varieties, it throws a clear and informative light on the
simple and complex phenomena involved therein, by which
their manners of evolution and working can be more
exactly appreciated than is possible on any other lines of
research with which we are familiar.
Molecular, cellular, fibral, vascular, visceral, and neuro-
muscular, materio-dynamic methods of working, singly
and in combination, become more evident and apparent,
and to some extent the complex totality of the human
organism stands out in greater relief and better perspective
than can be obtained from any other point of view, until,
when we arrive at that stage of its evolution where the
psychic powers become developed, we have but to add
another materio-dynamic circulation of a still higher and
more subtle nature than any yet possessed or observed in
virtue of mere vitality, and capable of evolution to an
altogether marvellous extent beyond what characterises
the merely materio-dynamic powers of the highest forms
of non-psychic life. Moreover, we have made use of it in
threading the lines of pathological manifestations through-
out the tortuosities of tissue and organ where they have
insinuated themselves into the regions of physiological
purity and health, and have wrought out the problems of
disease and death with a feeling of greater certainty than
we had hitherto felt when guided by more or less haphazard
lights.
Furthermore, we have felt, while thus pursuing our
self-imposed explorations into the farthest material regions
attainable by us, that we were touching the confines of "a
region beyond" biological physics, into which we could
not allow the " human disposition" to take glimpses, and
these glimpses have, to some extent, been described in an
appendix to what we have dealt with in biological physics
and physic, under the title of metaphysics.
Biological physics will be found dealt with at consider-
able length under the heads of some of the material and
dynamic, as well as the materio-dynamic, divisions or
aspects of that very large subject, while physic follows,
in less detail, and only a series of disjointed efforts have
been made to bridge over the debatable area between the
physical and the metaphysical, to show some of the lines
4 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
of continuity, and the bonds of union, which exist in the
united realms of natural and "revealed" truth.
In recognising the principle of circulation as all-per-
vading within the area of organism generally, but more
especially, for our purpose, within the human organism,
we think it well to begin our application of it by a
preliminary physical division of that organism into its
two constituent parts of solid and fluid, or into that part
which undergoes organisation, and into that other which,
when the first has become organised and vascularised,
circulates through it, becoming subservient to the great
functions of conveying into, and out of it, the materials
for its nutrition, and those which have been used up and
become effete, respectively, under the titles of protoplasm
and lymph.
Protoplasm and lymph may be said to represent the
two essential and ultimate physical elements or principles
through, and by which, life takes into itself organic form
and individuality, in accordance with the laws of heredity,
and the axiom : omne vivum ex vivo, in contradistinction
to the doctrine of abiogenesis. They constitute, alike,
the unicell, the multicell, and the most histologically
differentiated organisms, requiring but the endowment of
transmitted vital energy, without which their continued
existence as organic basic units is impossible. Physico-
chemically they may be imitated, but developmentally or
physiologically they can scarcely be said to evince more
than physical change, the great desideratum of life being
wanted to initiate and continue the process of biogenesis,
and the development of definite organic forms capable of
persistence.
The two essential physiological elements of living, or
vital, organisation, protoplasm and lymph, although abso-
lutely distinct physical entities, cannot live apart from
each other ; hence, in every living body they are indis-
solubly joined biological elements, and the protoplasm
affording stability to the lymph, and the lymph circulating
throughout the protoplasm on terms of such intimacy that
the result is a living organism. One universal circulation
of the lymph in its various forms prevails throughout the
protoplasmically composed organism marked by systemic
INTRODUCTION 5
division into two main groups, dynamically operated by
the sympathetic and the systemic nervous systems respec-
tively— these two nervous systems in reality constituting
the two organic elements of which the living body is
composed, not only physically but dynamically : that is to
say, the sympathetic nervous system innervates as well as
composes the elements structural and visceral of the organic
life, while the systemic nervous system, in like manner,
innervates, as well as composes, the elements of the volun-
tary neuro-muscular life, the two jointly innervating and
composing certain of the structural and visceral elements,
responsive to their joint, or mutual, control in certain
regions of the body. Of this universal circulation the
areas principally dealt with are the nutritional, or metabolic,
within the sympathetic division, and the general nervine
within the systemic division consisting of what remains
unaccounted for by the sympathetic, i.e. the neural lymph
and nerve substance circulations.
In connection with the subjects of nutrition and meta-
bolism, the basal structural organism, the cell, is dealt with
in its dual developments of sympathetic nerve cell and
systemic nerve cell, or neuron, respectively.
Why these areas of the universal circulation are more
particularly dealt with is, that they have not been given
the exhaustive attention that the other circulatory areas
have received, and that if universal circulation is to attain
to the fully understood condition of the circulation of the
blood and other less widely distributed circulations, it is
necessary that not a single step, or stage, of it should be
neglected or left out.
The subjects of the neuron and neuronogenesis from
their foundation position in systemic nervine nutrition and
nerve energy production have also received considerable
attention in several somewhat novel directions ; as, for
example, that every nerve cell or neuron does not receive
its nutritive pabulum directly from the blood circulation,
but from the matrix of this neuroglia, and, contrary to the
usual teaching, that its dendritically imbibed protoplasm
is excreted along its axonal process, or processes, into the
sensory and motor terminal arborisations respectively, in
the form of organisable material which is utilised by the
6 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
skin and muscle structures respectively, as nutritive plasma
in turn.
These statements consequently require a modification
of our beliefs with respect to the power of circulation of
nerve and other fibres and their capability of conveying
the elements of nutrition as well as energy.
The principle of universal circulation is intimately
associated with the processes of secretion and excretion
and the functions and structures of glands, consequently
these subjects are largely dealt with in detail preparatory
to taking up the pathological and clinical bearings of the
subject.
The glands referred to particularly are the pituitary and
coccygeal in their connection with the subject of cerebro-
spinal lymph excretion, and the related pineal, lachrymal,
nasal and salivary glands, also the parotid glands and
carotids.
Moreover, this last-mentioned aspect of the subject calls
for the statement of the fact that a large number of
diseased conditions are found to owe their origin to inter-
ference with the principle of local and universal circulation.
It is almost unnecessary to say that the data warranting
these statements have been collected from all available
sources and that in the course of collection thousands of
individual and collected facts have been utilised, leaving
behind, unutilised, uncountable stores for similar purposes
which are now, to a great extent, lying idle and in danger
of being buried amid the daily and yearly accumulations
being added to them in all civilised countries. Indeed, it
seems to us that the greatest need at the present time is
the assimilation and assortment of this vast and rapidly
increasing body of loosely coherent knowledge, and the
deduction of the laws underlying and interpenetrating its
vast bulk, ere it becomes unattainable from mere dimen-
sions and variety.
Here we would enter a plea for the observance of
simplicity and continuity in the syntactic advancement of
science in order that every analytic fact may be utilised
at once as it becomes added to the sum of knowledge,
to the end that special knowledge should be at all times
available for general use.
INTRODUCTION 7
Science, as known now, has been developed slowly from
chaotic notions and first principles, as the empirical gave
way before the advancing tide of observation, experiment,
and induction, until it has ceased to be a systematic body
of knowledge and has become divided and subdivided into
a congeries of sciences, more or less separate from each
other, and working continuously along more or less rigidly
special lines, until the principle of continuity is in danger
of being forgotten, and the advantage of concerted move-
ment lost, and the great need of simplicity in the handling
of large masses of knowledge sacrificed to the requirements
of increasing and strengthening specialisation.
To meet the requirements thus arising it would seem
reasonable that some central means should exist that would
at once be in touch with the latest advancements in special
science and actuated with a keen desire to bring the whole
into conformity for general purposes, whether theoretical
or practical.
Thus, principles become deducible from a general sur-
vey which would remain undiscovered amid the masses
of special knowledge.
Thus, for example, Harvey, from the mass of pre-
existent archaic anatomical knowledge, with his own
indefatigable observation and experiment, deduced the
principle of the circulation of the blood, and gave to
science biological an impetus which is felt at the present
day and will continue a force and incentive to men of
science throughout all time.
On the completion of his discovery, and the arrival of
the time at which it could be presented to his contem-
poraries with a good hope of its acceptance, he found that
there was one link which his limited powers of observation
could not supply, but which he, with an inductive acumen
and a scientific effort of imagination perhaps not surpassed
in the annals of research, felt must be a definite structural
provision, which, when the microscope arrived, was proved
just as he surmised.
This missing link in the otherwise complete chain of
blood circulation was the capillary vasculature, which
united the arterioles to the venules, gave the finishing
touch to his great work of discovery, and placed the
8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
principle of circulation as an organic modus Vivendi on a
platform of absolutely demonstrable truth.
A somewhat similar dilemma befell him at an earlier
stage of his investigations when brought face to face with
the linking of the pulmonary and general blood circulation
and their relationship to the phenomena of a unal or undi-
vided circulation, under the control and by the divisional
operation of the powers resident within the four chambers
of the heart.
In solving this problem his methods and efforts met
with entire success, subsequent discovery in this field
having but more firmly established his title to full confi-
dence and respect.
Since the great principle of circulation has had time
to work out under the constantly increasing band of
anatomical and physiological discoverers, and practical
workers in the domains of related science, it cannot be
gainsaid that great advances have been obvious through-
out the whole domain of biological science, and that
circulation after circulation has been added to the proved
realities of the human organism, giving it the appearance
of a combined system of circulations, the one hanging
on and united to the other with the completeness of a
transcendental continuity and oneness.
When examining this collection of circulations with a
view, so far as we could, to attempt the appreciation of
the tout ensemble of the circulatory chain, we have been
struck with the existence of missing links, such as this
which exists between the circulation of the blood proper
and the related haemal lymphatic circulation.
Within this area occur a series of circulations culmin-
ating in the assimilative, nutritional, or metabolic, which
has not by any means been fully explored, and which
therefore still calls for effort to place it on the level which
has been so long characteristic of the other areas of the
great subject.
On asking the following questions — How does the
blood reach the lymphatic vasculature, and what circu-
latory experiences does that portion of it which becomes
lymph undergo, previous to its entering that vasculature ?
we shall attempt an answer to the latter question first, in
INTRODUCTION 9
order that an answer may more readily and completely be
obtainable to the former.
What circulatory experiences does that portion of the
blood which reaches the lymphatic vasculature pass through
in becoming the specific fluid called lymph ? is the question
to be dealt with. We do not concern ourselves with the
present views held on the subject more than that we shall
endeavour to take advantage of all their teaching in order
to keep ourselves in harmony with the trend and spirit of
research. The alimentary circulation having ended in the
blood circulation, and the blood circulation having con-
veyed to its capillary vasculature the nutrition-laden blood,
what next takes place?
The red blood corpuscles after undergoing changes,
especially of a chemico-physical order, pursue their course
back to the heart for pulmonary aeration and renewal,
while the white pursue a still somewhat debatable course,
some, it may be, accompanying the red on their return to
the heart, and some escaping through the inter-spaces of
the lining endothelial cells, as "wandering cells" appearing
amid the tissue elements as leucocytes, phagocytes, and
others of "that ilk."
Meantime the proper nutritive elements floated in the
liquor sanguinis are taken up by the endothelial cell
osmosis, and passed as plasma into the bodies and nuclei
of the cells composing the capillary lining, whence they
are conveyed by the endothelial cell processes to neigh-
bouring deeper cells, and layers of cells, and tissue elements
proper, these cell processes being patent to the flow and
permeable to the conveyance of physiologically prepared
fluids, once more evidencing the principle of circulation
as the all-pervading method of organic conveyance.
It is impossible to conceive the conveyance from the
blood to the tissues of the elements of nutrition, or meta-
bolism, on any other lines than those of continuity of
lumina of circulatory ways, and thus we are warranted in
inferring that the lining capillary cells take up through
their walls into their bodies the nutritive plasma designed
to meet the metabolic requirements of their individual
organisms, and pass on what remains unused by their
processes, and what is required for the nourishment of
io BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the cells beyond, whose position in relation to immediate
contact with the blood is prevented by distance, and
therefore whose supplies have to be conveyed to them
vicariously — thus every cell, contiguous and related, near
and more distant, is supported by blood plasma, making
its selection therefrom, and passes out of itself, or excretes,
into the surrounding lymph spaces what it is incapable of
utilising, when it becomes added to the haemal lymph,
and is re-gathered by the vasculature of that fluid to the
heart.
In the central stage of this circulation, when the meta-
bolic phenomena of integration are taking place, and the
process of integration is ensuing within the cell and its
connecting processes, or filaments, the circulatory process
is reduced to atomic proportions throughout these tex-
tures, one atom following another in endless procession,
the period or stage thus represented constituting the inner-
most and final distributive arrangement of the bioplasm,
during which it may be said to have become, and to be
absolutely alive, all the preceding stages of its circulation
having added more and more vitality to it, while all
succeeding stages of its circulation are in inverse manner
engaged in taking vitality from it.
In this we perceive the principle of circulation to be
still equally effective, and in this most cryptic central
region joining the circulation of the blood to the lymphatic
circulation and effecting the whole phenomena of nutrition,
metabolism, and katabolism, those processes requiring the
existence of histological patency and porosity, sufficiently
minute and effective to allow of circulation in the atom
as the great circulatory channels allow of circulation in
the mass.
This manner of circulation, as we elsewhere contend, is
absolutely prohibitive of stasis, regurgitation, and sepsis,
and secures the existence of physiological hygiene in which
the condition known as health can be effectively and
continuously maintained devoid of auto-toxis.
Needless to say, all this is necessarily incapable of
demonstration by any device yet known to research, and
that its acceptance requires the use of a scientific faith at
least as strong as was possessed by Harvey, in regard to
INTRODUCTION 1 1
existence of a series of channels uniting the arterioles and
venules into one united whole. It, moreover, may yet be
possible to show experimentally the truth of the induction
and its applicability to the pathological and therapeutical
bearings of the subject.
Again, circulation within the metabolic area on these
lines lays the protoplasmic elements open to the chemico-
physiological forces of organic analysis and synthesis, so
that waste and unemployed materials are being continually
moved on, or removed, to secure the existence of an
unencumbered structural condition in which physiological
health can be maintained amid the fluctuations in food
supply and the altering conditions of the body as to the
exercise of everyday life and existence. Another great
missing link in the chain of human (and higher animal)
circulations is the cerebro-spinal fluid circulation, which is
co-extensive and conterminous with the systemic nervous
system, afferent and efferent, and which performs a
function in the organism of innervation of an importance
only comparable to that of the circulation of the blood
in the general economy and of an absolutely specific
character.
With this circulation, moreover, is associated a series of
what for the want of a better term we must describe as
neuronal circulations due to absorption or secretion by
the nerve cells from the matrix of the neuroglia of neural
pabulum, and its excretion, or growth, along the afferent
and efferent nervatures respectively, into the substance of
the skin, on the one hand, and the substance of the
voluntary muscles, on the other.
These missing links in the chain of the general, or pan-
circulation will be found elsewhere in these extracts dealt
with in detail, and recognised on the afferent, or sensory,
side of the nervous system as terminal or outfall, and on
the efferent, or motor, side as linked up again to the
circulation of the blood.
We have proved to our own satisfaction the truth of
these views from both the theoretical and practical sides,
and are now firmly convinced that their practical appli-
cation to the subjects of diagnosis and treatment of disease
it would be difficult to exaggerate, or unduly appraise.
12 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
It will be observed that the neural and neuronal
circulations are only indirectly continuous with the blood
circulation, inasmuch as they are separated from the blood
circulation by an intervening matrix of neuroglial sub-
stance in which the nerve cells are originally laid down,
from which they grow and interpenetrate the related
so-called non-nervous structures, and from which they
continue to maintain themselves and to exist as a great
nervous system, both materially and dynamically, circu-
lating alike and simultaneously the material and energy
necessary to nourish and innervate the neuro-musculo-
skeletal parts of the entire organism.
The original disposition of the blastodermic layers lays
the embryonic foundation for the growth and differenti-
ation of the future systemic, or central, nervous system
and the growth of one system within another, with all that
is implied in such transcendental structural arrangements
of individual and united material and functional results
and high evolutionary developments.
We are well aware that if these views be found tenable
an alteration of our foundation neurological doctrine will
become necessary, but, at the same time, hopeful that this
may be effected without, to any serious extent, involving
the disposition of the doctrinal substructure and super-
structure which have been so admirably reared on it ;
moreover, we are confident that the whole fabric must be
soundly constructed if it is meant to stand the increasing
strain of fresh accumulations of knowledge and yield the
practical results which it is entitled to afford to the pure
scientist, the physician, and the surgeon.
The simplicity of working of the principle of circulation
throughout the entire confines of the body becomes more
and more obvious the further it is followed, until, becom-
ing dimly cognisant of its universality as an instrument in
development and evolution, we are compelled to give it a
place second to none in the economy of vital operations
and life.
The continuity of its working and the union of its
various parts in the great chain of circulatory movements
give it an ideal place in the economy of development,
growth, and repair of organic structure, whether viewed
INTRODUCTION 13
in regard to particular tissues, or organs, or the entire
organism.
Thus we are convinced that the cause of the advance-
ment of science generally and the great human desider-
atum, the application of that advancement to the needs
of the suffering, will be stimulated and made subservient
to the wants of mankind.
As the discovery of the circulation of the blood was
the Open Sesame of the scientific anatomist, so it still
provides a key whereby can be opened gateways into the
byepaths of anatomical and physiological research, which
have but to be entered to reveal the great fact that our
knowledge, however advanced, is still very finite, and that
there still lies ahead much that is unexplored, but which
may be made more approachable and accessible along the
lines of simplicity and continuity.
Every new, or fresh, discovery, moreover, reveals the
fact that nature's ways and methods are universally simple
and direct, and that they are absolutely continuous in their
operation and consistent in their results.
EXTRACT La.
ON THE PRIMARY DIVISION OF THE PHYSICAL, OR
ORGANIC, ELEMENTS OF THE LIVING BODY INTO
PROTOPLASM, OR BIOPLASM, AND LYMPH.
Protoplasm, or Bioplasm, Lymph, and Blood.
Protoplasm, or bioplasm, is the physiological constituent
or element through, and by which, all vital or organic
material formative phenomena are effected, but the ele-
ments of which it is composed, although mechanically
mixed in even definite physiological and chemical propor-
tions, are incapable of producing life, hence a vital process
of "admixture" or "union," under materio-dynamic
conditions determined by pre-existent "biological pos-
session," is essential to their manifestation of "living"
phenomena, or life.
Protoplasm thus determined, and insured by descent,
the exercise of its distinctive powers on properly prepared
raw material, can convert that material into what it requires
for its continued existence as a living unit or part of an
organised body.
Protoplasm is the plastic or solid material out of which
all living organisms, vegetable and animal, are made or
evolved, and from which all the parts, organs, and viscera
are constructed. It is, therefore, a substance sharply
separable from the fluid or lymph, haemal and neural, as
well as the liquor sanguinis, and the many other more
local and definite fluids to be met with throughout the
body generally. It is the material, in fact, of which the
living body, as a moving independent organism, is made
ORGANIC ELEMENTS 15
up, and in the interstices of which lodge the contained
lymph and lymphoid fluids, or it is the decidedly solid
material which imparts to the human and other bodies
that character of enduringness and individuality which
gives them their living generic features.
Its chemical and physiological characteristics are to some
extent absolutely definite, while its power to assume what-
ever degree of consistence is necessary for specific purposes
is unbounded, or limited only by the organic requirements
of the particular organism. Every feature, organ, and
histological development marks its power of adaptation,
and the universality of its use in every local variety of
circumstance, temporary and permanent, which arises
during developmental and evolutional progress ; while
the process of nutrition but marks the everyday work
which it is accomplishing in the economy of growth and
decay, of substitution of new for old, and or the main-
tenance of tissue integrity and systemic health. All the
tissue elements are thus the result of the disposition of
protoplasm on definite formative lines, during the long
developmental progress of embryonal, foetal, infantile,
adolescent, and senile life, and each stage of that life is
marked by a departure from the other, in obedience to
the effects of environment on the details of its incidence,
and the intensity of its local and general involvement of
these tissue elements. While these departures are deter-
mined by unfailing law, when the conditions of life are
absolutely perfect, and manifest themselves in regular and
unfailing order in consequence, it is equally certain that
any departure from these conditions must be followed by
a departure from that order, in proportion to the amount
of the disturbing causes and the directions in which they
operate.
The protoplasmic elements of all tissues are surrounded
and inter-penetrated by a fluid medium, different in
chemical composition from them, and wanting in the
property of life, but nevertheless essential for the mani-
festation of vital properties on the part of the protoplasmic
elements contained therein, and necessary for the passage
of dynamic influence from cell to cell, from tissue to tissue,
and from the external world to the sentient structures and
1 6 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
vehicular agencies of the central nervous system, or sen-
sorium, and sympathetic nervous system alike. This fluid
begins to be apparent on the formation of the chyle, and
continues to be elaborated, taken from, and added to, as
the elements of nutrition are elaborated, metabolised,
katabolised, and removed from the system as altogether
effete, noxious, and beyond the reach of further nutritive
service. Throughout all the modifications undergone by
this fluid, or lymph, a sequence of changes takes place,
determined by the exigencies of nutrition, with the associ-
ated and necessitated processes of secretion and excretion,
and carried out in normal health with unerring chemico-
physiological precision, complete systemic hygiene, and
non-morbid results.
This fluid, therefore, circulates within and without the
permanent organised protoplasmic elements and structures
by virtue of inter-spaces, canals, and vessels, sometimes
cystic chambers, for passive collection, being provided
besides, and affords a solid medium in which many of
the chemico-physiological reactions of nutrition take place.
Moreover, it is not only a solvent medium, but a mechani-
cal washing agency , in which the katabolic residuum of
tissue waste is detached and removed and finally floated
out of the system, and a great antiseptic fluid, in which
the spores and developed organisms of microbic agencies
are effectually dealt with by natural hygiene under the
control of the vis medicatrix natur^e^ and disease thereby
averted.
We thus see in the constant and comparatively large
proportion of chloride of sodium universally present in
lymph and lymphoid fluids that more than accident deter-
mines the circumstance, and that it is, in fact, none other
than a great natural provision for the maintenance of
structural sweetness and systemic non-autotoxis, whereby
the thousand and one noxious agencies entering it are
dissolved, neutralised, or fixed, in non-katodynamic order,
suitable for safe lodgment in, or conveyance out of, the
system.
The elements of protoplasm are selected from the raw
materials of the food, licked into organic shape by the
formative vital energies of the various structural elements
ORGANIC ELEMENTS 17
of the body, in obedience to the developmental require-
ments of its various tissues, organs, and members, and
maintained in life by the play of vital energy along various
lines, mechanical, chemical, physiological, and what, for
lack of a better term, we must still denominate specific,
sui generis, or purely vital.
Each histological element of the body has for its foun-
dation constituent protoplasm, and selects for its specific
formative necessities whatever else it requires from the
lymph, the liquor sanguinis, or other lymphoid fluid with
which it is surrounded and inter-penetrated, its nutrition
being thus effected from the fluids circulating throughout
its substance, and carried there by the omnipresent circu-
lation, alimentary, sanguineous, and lymphoid.
The blood, as known to physiologists, may be roughly
divided into two distinct elements, viz. the liquor sanguinis
and the corpuscles, the latter being divisible into red and
white, the former, the liquor sanguinis, being composed,
to a large extent, of the amorphous organic constituents
of protoplasm, and is principally the result of immediate
gastro-enteric absorption and direct transmission into the
blood vasculature of the stomach and intestines, while
the corpuscular elements, being mainly the products of
glandular arrangement and organisation, are the result of
intestinal digestive activity on the chyme, prepared in the
stomach and passed in ordered array through its pyloric
orifice, to be admixed with the intestinal juices and the
secretions of the great abdominal viscera, and thereby
rendered capable of absorption by the villi of the intestinal
mucosa, and circulation through the chyliferous vessels
and glands into the blood currents.
No doubt the physiological operations of the corpus-
cular organisation and vitalisation of the chyle lay the
sanguineous foundation on which are ultimately reared the
whole anatomical structure of life, and there is little doubt
that the inverse process of devitalisation begins at the
high-water mark of absolutely complete or perfect tissue
incorporation, or metabolism, or at the acme of trophic
change, where the last atomic act of integration yields to
the first atomic act of disintegration, the process of integra-
tion representing the dynamic reign of vital phenomena,
1 8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and the process of disintegration the adynamic reign of
vital phenomena, the two balancing each other in exact
proportion so long as the condition of perfect health is
maintained.
The meso- and hypo-blastic areas may be regarded as
altogether actuated or innervated by sympathetic nerve
influence, and consequently the protoplasmic formative
and nutritive phenomena displayed in those areas may be
said to be altogether effected by sympathetic agency, while
the epiblastic area may be regarded as dynamically actuated
or innervated by the conjoined influence of both the sym-
pathetic and the systemic nervous systems, the metabolism
of the tissues of each being effected entirely by nerve
agency, material as well as dynamic. Apart from this
compound, or materio-dynamic nerve agency, no life
worth the name can be displayed.
EXTRACT Lb.
ON THE PRIMARY DIVISION OF THE CONSTITUENTS
OF THE LIVING BODY— {Continued).
Lymph and Lymphoid Fluids.
That the term lymph is of very frequent occurrence in
the literature of the sciences, constituting the foundation
on which practical medicine, surgery, and obstetrics rest,
is at once apparent to the most elementary reader, and
that it is in continual use by the initiated in the practice
of one and all departments of the medical profession is a
matter of everyday knowledge and experience.
Lymph may, therefore, be regarded as a fluid of constant
occurrence in the scientific and practical experience of all
in any way concerned with the study and application of
such subjects to the daily wants of men and animals, and as
a subject many-sided in the range of its practical bearings
on the application of preventive, curative, and ameliorative
means and principles. Its earliest appearance as a formed,
organic fluid, we may take it, is in the form of chyle.
After, or when it has been thus far elaborated, and, we
may assume, partially vitalised, by the gastric, and subse-
quently, as chyle, by the intestinal, mucosa, and the
mesenteric glands, it is prepared for physical admixture
and chemico-physiological union with the blood proper for
further organisation and vitalisation. At this stage it
becomes, from that admixture and union and its subse-
quent subjection to pulmonary aeration, the vehicle as
well as the material of the nutritive plasma of the arterial
blood either as its liquor sanguinis^ which is the typical
lymphoid fluid, co-extensive with the blood circulation, or
2o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
as a fluid constituent part of its corpuscular element.
After osmotic departure from the blood vasculature, it
enters the matrix of the disintegrating and vacuolated
tissues to become assimilated by these tissue elements so far
as their wants require, its unselected or unused residuum
passing on in rear of, or blending with, the released or
worn-out chemico-physiological constituents of those
tissues, to find localised re-admission .into the blood with
the constituents of the thoracic duct, as the lymph proper.
The lymph proper, or haemal lymph, after occupying every
tissue space and inter- space of the extra-vascular regions
of the structures and organs of the body generally, apart
from those of the systemic nervous system, is collected
from these spaces and inter-spaces by the lymphatic vascu-
lature proper, passed through lymphatic glands, where it
is re-elaborated and, ultimately, returned into the blood
for further use in the economy, or for elimination as effete
and noxious excretion. Besides the haemal lymph, which
is entirely concerned in processes connected with the
economy and phenomena of haemogenesis and sympathetic
nutrition, or metabolism, another form of lymph is elabor-
ated from the blood circulation, where and when it deposits
the glial elements of the neuroglia amid the fibro-cellular
basis, or matrix, of that structure, and where and when, in
depositing that neuro-basal substance, it releases a greater
or lesser proportion of its liquor sanguinis to become the
neural lymph or cerebro-spinal fluid. The functional role
of this lymph, or fluid, being elsewhere treated in some
detail, we content ourselves here with merely bespeaking
a continued remembrance of its clinical bearings in all
diseased conditions involving the systemic nervous system
and those organs and structures related in any way to it
by continuity of histological development and evolution
as well as innervation. Lymph thus, from its ubiquity,
becomes the fluid in which and through which all the vital
and organic activities of the body are conducted — in which
respect it may be compared with oxygen in the universal
chemical processes of metabolism, or with the sympathetic
nervature in its relation to the continuous or never-ending
propagation and maintenance of life and life forms in all
their phases and varieties.
ORGANIC ELEMENTS
21
Lymph being thus a general term for the fluid basis of
all the organic fluids, primary and secondary, original and
derived, circulating within the body, from the elaborated
chyme, and chyle, succeeding the digestive processes of the
alimentary canal, to the excretionary fluids proper, and the
effete products of organic waste, as they are floated out of
the body, is applicable, as a descriptive appellation, with
truth to all forms of haemal, as well as neural, fluids, and,
therefore, that it constitutes a bond of union or continuity
between all the circulatory disposals and organic processes
involved in development, growth and decay, integration,
disintegration, life and death of tissue, organ, and organ-
ism. The aqueous or fluid portion of the ingesta thus
becomes the basis of the lymph and lymphoid fluids, and
the medium in which the solid portion of them is dissolved
and held in solution and suspension preparatory to circu-
latory disposal to the various tissues requiring nutrition.
Thus loaded, it may be said to carry the nutritive elements
to the tissues and to deliver them piecemeal as the nutritive
necessities of these tissues require, in atomic, molecular,
or larger proportions to meet their various wants, leaving
them where required ; and then, taking up the used-up and
effete materials which functional activity has discharged,
and whose removal is essential to maintain the condition
of physiological purity and health, it delivers them into
the lymphatic vasculature, to be further dealt with by it
before being returned into the blood stream.
Thus alone is it possible for the hygienic circulation of
nutritive pabulum to be effected, and the work of material
change and exchange to be accomplished within the matrix
of the various textures of which the human and higher
animal bodies are composed, and thus alone is it possible
for the vis medicatrix nature to be an effective agency in
each such economy. Lymph thus becomes the fluid by
whose circulatory movements the nutritive materials of
the ingesta are conveyed to the tissues, and the refuse
materials of the egesta are conveyed from the tissues, the
one process of conveyance balancing the other, and both
constituting a circulatory process of conveyance of un-
broken continuity throughout the thoroughfares of the
body ; the intricacies of the trophic changes constituting
22 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the central stage, or acme, of the metabolism of nutrition,
where the currency of new pabulum is given in exchange
for the currency of effete, effaced, or damaged tissue
elements, in the proportion of atom for atom, and mole-
cule for molecule, with rigorous exactitude, and to the
entire satisfaction of mutual needs. All the fluids met
with in the body are consequently but derivatives from
this fluid, serving some special purpose, and returning
to the parent source, or being excreted as no longer neces-
sary, or, it may be, hurtful to the economy of circulation
and nutrition ; thus, serum in all its varieties, synovia,
sweat, sensible and insensible, glandular excretions, and
the great systemic evacuations, represent the purposive
utilisation and disposal of this universally disposed fluid
for systemic necessities, local and general, and for the
accomplishment of the ' ' thousand and one " vital pro-
cesses occurring and recurring within the vital areas. The
circulation of this fluid is effected on lines beginning
with, and flowing from, ingestion, and terminating with
egestion, or shedding through vascular systems proper, or
by quasi-solid fibres composed of fibrils, with connecting
spaces and inter-spaces, from the considerable to the
atomic, where the passage of the mass and the molecule are
alike provided for, the whole constituting a system of
graduated and onwardly progressive circulation through
inter-material, sponge-like space and inter-space areas, from
the interior of which the tissues proper extract or receive
their needed pabulum, and convert it into their proper
substance by their inherent vital powers, returning it by
an inverse order of procedure.
This universal system of circulation requires for its per-
formance an uninterrupted succession of circulatory ways,
from its inception to its close, hence solidarity, as it is
to be met with in the matrix of organic substances, can
only be relative, and we must be prepared to find that
nutrition is only possible so long as these circulatory ways
remain patent and pervious, to the ever onward passage of
the lymph streams, in which are held in solution, or sus-
pension, the prospective tissue elements in the cis-nutritive
lymph, and the retrospective tissue elements in the trans-
nutritive lymph. The existence, therefore, of impervious
ORGANIC ELEMENTS 23
fibres of absolutely solid walls of hardened tissue, as con-
taining envelopes of secreted fluids, must be understood
as expressing only halfway, tentative, or temporary truths,
applicable merely as convenient expressions in a transition
state of scientific belief, but lacking in present adaptability,
and requiring modification to meet the use of altered and
altering views and beliefs.
The maintenance of this circulation, it will at once be
seen, is necessary for the accomplishment of the meta-
bolism of every texture, and for the existence of the
condition of physiological health of the organism of which
they form a part. Should it, therefore, fail in any part in
developed vasculature, or in atomic space, from any cause,
material or dynamic, then the first step in pathogenesis
will be taken, and, if followed up by continued steps in the
same direction, a fully developed pathological condition,
or disease, will be the inevitable result, recovery from
which may occur by renewal or reversal, or death from
progression or persistence of the circulatory fault.
Lymph, or lymphoid fluids, are divisible into haemal and
neural, the former in turn is composed of two varieties,
viz. the pre- or cis-nutritive, and the post- or trans-
nutritive, while, for all practical purposes we may regard
the neural lymph as one and indivisible under the title of
cerebro-spinal.
Roughly speaking, the kidneys effect the elimination
of the haemal lymph, together with the neural lymph of
the systemic motor nervature, while the skin, and special
neural emanations, effect the elimination, with that excep-
tion, of the neural lymph. Lymph, in short, is the fluid
which occupies the inter-molecular and inter-granular
spaces of organised protoplasm ; therefore, its influence is
essential in all developmental processes, so that from the
period of unicellular life of the fecundated ovum, it never
ceases to perform the offices of passively occupying vacua,
small and great, amid the stroma of living structure, and
of actively conveying the elements of nutrition to, and of
carrying out of, the organism all that is no longer useful,
or beneficial, in the currency of its everyday changes and
exchanges. Moreover, in all the stages of embryonic life,
its presence, in proportionately greater quantity, renders
24 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the work of development, amid a matrix of nutritive
or organic material, which is little more than colloidal in
consistence, a work of comparative ease and precision, so
to speak, as, by the quasi-mechanical ballooning of cell
wall, of inter-cellular space, and of organised canal, it
affords a basis of physical support, on which even the
most delicate histological elements can be developmentally
dealt with with the least degree of confusion, and with the
greatest exactitude and safety ; while, after the conclusion
of embryonic development of the various textures and
organs constituting that stage of growth, it yields itself
still to the growing requirements of the post-embryonic
and foetal Organism, by allowing the expansion and exten-
sion due to constant organic additions to take place by its
gradual and measured withdrawal or retirement, and by the
shrinkage and folding of its containing textures, until its-
proportions are reduced to a "vestige of themselves,"
and relegated to the nooks and corners and hidden recesses
of the central cerebro-spinal, or neural and haemogenetic
organs.
Amid all the vicissitudes through which this great fluid
element of the body passes it retains, in its physiological
condition, the characteristics of asepticity, and the power
of chemical and physiological preservativeness, on which
the condition of health is so inevitably and essentially
dependent.
EXTRACT I.e.
ON CEREBRO-SPINAL, OR NEURAL, AND H^MAL LYMPH
IN COMPARISON WITH EACH OTHER, AND IN THEIR
MUTUAL RELATIONSHIPS.
While lymph is regarded as a generic term, embracing
all the varieties of that fluid found in the lymphatic
vessels, the cerebro-spinal cavity, and the various ' ' shut
sacs," as they are commonly called, which are to be found
throughout the body, as well as in the inter- and intra-
textural spaces of the connective and more organised
tissues and organs, the liquor sanguinis being truly lymph,
may be looked upon as the source from which all lymph
is originally drawn, and the great storage depot, so to
speak, into which it primarily and secondarily finds its
way, because into it comes the chyle, fresh from the
digestive organisms, with the lymphatic fluid proper,
collected by the lymphatic vascular system throughout
the body, to be emptied into the great blood stream. A
great exception to his rule, or manner of lymph disposal,
however, must be claimed, according to our views on the
subject, for the distribution and direct final elimination of
a great proportion of the cerebro-spinal lymph, inasmuch
as it is walled off, and kept regionally separate from the
lymphatic circulation proper by its own containing spaces
and vessels, with the exception of its distribution to the
muscular structures, where it secondarily or finally becomes
continuous with the systemic or haemal lymphatic fluid and
the lymphatic circulation proper, and where, consequently,
its sometimes pathological or pathogenic condition is liable
to disturb the physiological lymphatic equipoise, and to
26 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
engender disease, most especially of the muscles and all
the structures in which they end, and with which they are
functionally connected.
To distinguish between the lymph proper and the fluid
contents of the cerebro-spinal cavity and related nerve
channels, it might tend to a clearer and more exact appre-
hension of the physiological situation involved in the
foregoing remarks, were we to adopt permanently the
terms haemal and neural, the former term applying to
the lymph within the lymphatics proper, and the latter
to the cerebro-spinal fluid.
Naturally, these two fluids differ somewhat in chemical
composition and physiological character, in consequence of
their difference in genesis, and the very different offices
they subserve in the economy of nutrition and elimination
— the haemal lymph being mainly, if not entirely, engaged
in the work of sanguification, nutrition, and the removal
of disintegrated material from the extra- or non-systemic
nervine structures, while the neural lymph has its func-
tional role confined within the precincts of the cerebro-
spinal nerve structures proper, with the exception of their
neuro-muscular aspect.
The former, or haemal lymph, is rich in nutritive and
corpuscular, or organic, materials because of its nutritional
position, while the latter, or neural, is destitute of such
elements, being mostly concerned in chemico-mechanical
work, or, at any rate, work of that character, together with
the most important function of removing from within
the inter-spaces of the systemic nervous system the disin-
tegrated and effete materials resulting from the functional
activity of that system, or, as we may express it, the
" doubly distilled" residuum of the vital " tear-and-wear "
of both the haemal and the neural systems, so to speak.
These things being so, we would expect to find, and
are warranted in anticipating, that the neural lymph, in
virtue of the dual concentration of its effete constituents,
should be circumscribed, in the extent of its intra-systemic
circulation, as far as is possible, and should be walled off
from the haemal streams of lymph, and conveyed out of,
or from within, the precincts of the systemic nervous system
directly, and without allowing a possibility of the occur-
NEURAL AND UIEMAL LYMPH 27
rence of autotoxis, which would otherwise be constantly
liable to take place, as is sometimes, notwithstanding,
the case at the motor terminations of the systemic nerves,
and beyond. This physiological necessity we find pro-
vided for by the many inter-communicating channels
and excretory organs along and through which the
cerebro-spinal fluid finds its exit from the cerebro-spinal
cavity.
The haemal lymph, being largely nutritive, and, con-
sequently, prospective in systemic value, and the neural
lymph largely excretory, and, consequently, retrospective
in systemic value, the former requires husbanding, the
latter eliminating. Regarded from a physiological stand-
point these facts must, consequently, be borne in mind,
so that when the pathological and therapeutical bearings
of them come up for practical consideration, they, we
fondly hope, will not be found barren in affording indi-
cations for the scientific use and application of both our
medical and surgical skill in the suggestion, it may be,
of fresh lines of attack, in the capture of the enemy's
positions, in our hand-to-hand conflicts with the powers
of disease and death.
I thus behoves us at all times, whether we are regarding
the cerebro-spinal lymph from a physiological or a patho-
logical point of view, to look upon it as a fluid, the vital
role of which is largely played out, and that, therefore,
it is not designed to be re-admitted into the blood stream
for redistribution throughout the system, a process to
which some of it — the motor — may possibly have been
already subjected ; besides that, its re-admission into the
haemal vascular system constitutes an outstanding danger
to be constantly guarded against, lest the lethal processes
of autotoxis be initiated. While the nutritive value of
the cerebro-spinal fluid may be regarded as a negligible
quantity or nil, if re-admitted into the blood stream,
and while it may be regarded as a fluid destined for
elimination from the economy of nutrition, as an agent
which makes for autotoxis, we must, nevertheless, regard
it as still playing an important part in the functional
activities of the nervous system proper, cerebral, spinal,
and neural, in its mechanical action as a buffer, as an
28 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
automatic regulator of intra-cerebro-spinal tension and
pressure, as well as a caloric regulator, and as an insulating
agency, but more especially as affording a medium by,
and through which the nerve stimuli operate both in their
initiation and transmission of nervine molecular changes,
or currents, its chemical composition, physiological char-
acter, and intra-spatial ubiquity, insuring an ever-available
environment of the nervous system, in its entire extent,
of the required conditions in, or for, the most elementary,
as well as in, or for, the most complex, states, or processes,
of nervine and intellectual activity.
To accomplish these varied ana important offices it will
be at once apparent that a certain physical consistence, as
well as a certain chemical and physiological composition
of nervine structure and psychological balance, described
in classic phrase as mens sana in corpore sano, is to be
maintained, and, therefore, that there is here displayed
a wide field for the exercise of the constantly needful
potency of mental, moral, and material hygiene. In short,
into this great debatable region and peripheral ' ' lone
land" surrounding the empire and citadel of our inner
life and being it is of the most vital importance that we
should allow nothing wrong to enter, and that we should
permit nothing wrong to remain.
The analytical tables compiled by the exponents of
organic chemistry will afford a means of comparing the
chemical composition of the various forms of lymph and
some other fluids, which may be said to be largely, if
not entirely, derived from lymph, and will show that a
common chemical basis insures and determines a more or
less common physiological character of composition, the
generic differences of the various fluids being due to the
addition of a specific or particular chemico-physiological
agent, or substance, the product of a particular secretory
structure, agency, or gland.
We think a casual glance at, and comparison of, the
analyses of lymphoid fluids by different analysts will afford
the most ample justification for the advancement of the
opinions that all the fluids of the body, being of common
origin, 'have a comparatively similar chemical composition^
and that the chemico-physiological activities of the various
NEURAL AND H^MAL LYMPH 29
organs and textures of the body are but engaged in
elaborating the distinctive varieties of a common fluid
for special or specific purposes. This common fluid may
be said to be typified by the liquor sanguinis, which
is the "finished article," resulting from the processes of
ingestion, digestion, sanguification, and regestion, and
the vehicle for the conveyance of all nourishment to all
structures, while all the other fluids found within the
body are but derivatives and specialised fluids, destined
for specific functional purposes, or for direct and indirect
elimination.
The analysis of the cerebro-spinal fluid reveals a com-
position of considerable chemical complexity, as well as a
destitution of organised particles, and a preponderance of
what may be denominated preservative saline ingredients,
with a seemingly strange and apparently out of place
substance known as peptone. We emphasise "strange"
and "apparently," but have we not here a survival of
neurenteric function due to the existence of a common
embryonic origin, structure, and function, dating from a
period antecedent to the separation of the neurenteric canal
into its two divisions, and their subsequent almost, but
not complete, differentiation? The largely saline char-
acter, mainly from chloride of sodium, and composition of
the fluid seem to point to a necessary condition of asepsis
of the medium which is responsible for the hygienic irriga-
tion of the extra-, inter-, and intra-neural and peri-vascular
spaces of the brain and cord, and to the retention of a
chemical and molecular sweetness on the part of the some-
what faintly vital and amorphous material of the neuroglial
matrix ; moreover, we find, as already claimed, that a
medium is thus secured, in and through which nerve im-
pulse moves readily and spontaneously along the designed
molecular channels and nerve tracts, and that its continuity
and ubiquity are essential for the uninterrupted and full
working of the vast materio-dynamic machinery embraced
within the confines of the nervous system, central and
peripheral.
The cerebro-spinal fluid, being constantly secreted or
exuded by the pia mater and associated choroid plexuses, is
distributed along the spaces and inter-spaces of the entire
3o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
nervous system, or structures, and finally exudes or is
exuded from the special exits, or from the free surfaces
of the skin and membranes, mucous and serous, and into
the sarco-lemmar sheaths of the muscle fibres to which
it is conveyed, and thence into the systemic lymphatic
circulation. A large quantity, therefore, but difficult of
measurement, must be constantly escaping through the
sensory and motor nerve terminals respectively, the
abnormal increase or diminution of which may initiate
pathological conditions of the greatest importance, the
removal and disposal of which must be sought for to a
large extent in a clear knowledge of the problems under
discussion.
The nervous system in its entirety is inter-penetrated
by and bathed in this fluid initiated by and resulting from
the setting free of aqueous and organisable materials from
the blood in the process of developmental integration and
growth, or evolution of the embryo and foetus from the
substance of the impregnated ovum, the accumulation, or
increase, of which keeps pace with the increase in size of
these organisms, but fluctuates — increasing and diminish-
ing within certain limits — according to the necessities
arising from its altering and evolutionary conditions and
surroundings. The presence of this fluid, which in post-
natal life is recognised as the cerebro-spinal fluid or lymph,
throughout the spaces and inter-spaces of the nervine
structures is a vital necessity in the economy of the struc-
tures for supporting and protective purposes, as well as
a chemico-physiological agent in maintaining the vital-
ity and hygiene of the neuroglial amorphous elements.
Moreover, we would once more emphasise that its presence
thus throughout the universal systemic nerve elements is
necessary as an indispensable accessory in all functional
activity of the nervous system, whether central or peri-
pheral. In other words, nerve impulse can only be
permitted to travel within or through it in the normal and
physiological condition, and nerve stimuli can only reach
the stimulatable molecular nerve elements and textures
through it, and, therefore, that it performs something like
the function or work of the fluid in the economy of
the "wet cell" electric battery. Hence are explained the
NEURAL AND HiEMAL LYMPH 31
positive results and negative results, respectively, in
experiments on the sensory effects of the application of
odoriferous or olfactory stimuli to the Schneiderian mem-
brane, through or in the various media of odoriferous,
neutral, and saline solutions, in which experiments it is
most remarkable and suggestive to find that odoriferous
particles can only be well appreciated by the sense of smell
when suspended in a solution of chloride of sodium, or
some equivalent saline medium or substance. We are,
therefore, we think, warranted in claiming for the cerebro-
spinal fluid a very wide range of influence, active and
passive, in the economy of the sensory, as well as motor,
phenomena of the nervous system, besides those of per-
forming the vitally important functions of mechanical
protector and supporter, chemico-physiological preserver,
and general hygienic agent, with, it is conceivable, a multi-
tude of other allied and kindred offices of greater or less
importance throughout the length and breadth both of
the nervous and the so-called non-nervous systems and
structures.
Cerebro-spinal lymph, being a compound of the original
and the residual lymph resulting from the various organic
or physiological changes through which the neural plasma
has passed in its preparation for, and survival from,
neuronal nutrition, is therefore, as claimed, largely or
wholly effete, and requiring excretion, but while largely
or wholly effete, and requiring excretion, it still performs
numerous vitally important functions before and during
excretion, so that it never ceases to be a most important
factor in the accomplishment of physiological ends and
purposes ; so much so, that, without it, cerebration and
nervine activity generally would be impossible, and not
only paralysis, but death, be the consequence.
Systemic or haemal lymph, with which we may compare
it, performs somewhat kindred functions in the economy
of sympathetically determined nutrition through its being
the residual material resulting: from the extra-vascular dis-
posal of the liquor sanguinis and waste tissue elements
within the domain of that system's physiological influence,
and, therefore, composed of material much of which is still
to be made available for further nutritive, and, it may
32 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
be, special haemogenetic, purposes ere it be eliminated as
altogether or wholly effete. Systemic or haemal lymph is
more or less apparent and physiologically current in the
earliest stages of embryonic development, even from the
unicellular primary stage, and, in fact, represents the fluid
medium in which is conveyed the first metabolic or living
atom to the nascent and fecundated or vitalised germ
organism, as well as the continually increasing stores of
nutritive plasma, which the succeeding stages of embryonic
development, growth, and repair more and more call for
and necessitate, until the arrival of that stage of develop-
ment at which appear the earliest systemic nerve elements,
when an additional or the neural lymph makes itself
manifest. This latter, when fully evolved by successive
stages of physiological evolution, becomes recognised
throughout the completely developed systemic nervous
system as the cerebro-spinal lymph or fluid.
During that stage of embryonic development when the
rudiments of the future systemic nervous system are being
evolved and differentiated by and from the sympathetically
innervated organism, the outgrowing and infolding central
nerve structures emit and finally enclose this lymph or
fluid, which becomes responsible for the maintaining of
the patency of the central neural canal, around which are
developed the manifold nerve structures to be known as
the central nervous system, consisting of brain, cord,
and nerves. The developmental reason for this becomes
strongly apparent when we consider that the textural
consistence of the early systemic nerve elements is of the
most unresisting character, and that, consequently, the pro-
vision of an internal fluid support or "cushion of rest"
becomes a constructive or working necessity, and, hence,
we find that a column of this fluid becomes enclosed
which reaches from one end to the other of the rudi-
mentary neural tube and vesicles after differentiation of
the neurenteric canal. Besides affording a mechanical
support to the growing nerve textures this fluid penetrates
every vesicular protuberance, as well as nerve trunk, as
they are projected or developed into the neighbouring
sympathetically innervated organic structures, continuing
that mechanical support and bufferage so necessary even
CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH 33
to the terminal expansions of the individual nerve fibres,
thus securing their uninterrupted development and subse-
quent untrammelled functional role. As this fluid secures
an entrance into every extra-, intra-, and inter-nervine
space, so it maintains throughout life a more or less
complete possession of these spaces, and only retires
in obedience to anatomical requirements and hydrostatic
necessities, thus continuing to perform the original func-
tions for which it was elaborated and stored and is still
so well adapted to perform, as well as that of affording a
means of excretion by its many guarded exits of the effete
materials shed into it by the katabolic results of nervine
waste. Moreover, we see in this "maintenance of pos-
session" of these inter-, extra-, and intra-neural spaces,
that a great provision is secured for the regular supply of
"ready-made" lymph to such organs as the eyes and ears,
which constantly utilise a somewhat large amount, and
many of the glandular structures, oral and gastric, which
.are constantly, or periodically, active in the economy of
alimentation and other functions.
We thus perceive that the functions of the cerebro-
spinal lymph range themselves into active and passive,
:accordingly as they are physiological or mechanical, and
realise that the uninterrupted performance of these func-
tions becomes of the greatest moment in the maintenance
•of a physiologically perfect state of health and the preser-
vation of the classic condition, mens sana in corpore sano.
Surgical technique must, therefore, include the preserva-
tion of the natural channels of exit of this fluid in the
many procedures implicating the nervous system, and be
ready to supply substitutes, if necessary, for the discharge
of physiological function when that has been placed in
abeyance either by disease or accident.
The distribution of the cerebro-spinal fluid at the
different stages of embryonic and early fcetal growth, and
the different periods of adult life, undergoes a more or
less continuous change and fluctuation, both in regard to
relative quantity and quality ; thus, on the accomplishment
■of the neurenteric differentiation in the earliest embryonic
stages of life it is relatively large — the central nervous
system then only existing as a thin, elongated vesicle, filled
34 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
by it, until the accomplishment of the neurenteric differen-
tiation and the subsequent development of the rudimentary
cranio-spinal canal, with which it is at first conterminous,
the succeeding stages being characterised by a gradual
shortening of the canal, as its walls undergo a thickening
as the neural structures increase, during which it recedes
from the tip of the rudimentary coccyx to the first or
second lumbar vertebra, where it afterwards remains, leav-
ing behind it a thecal continuation, known as the fdum
terminale^ to maintain a modified structural and functional
connection with the posterior orifice of the enteric canal,
with which it was formerly continuous, to provide a
posterior exit for this neural lymph or fluid. Great but
decreasing patency continues to characterise the spaces con-
taining the cerebro-spinal fluid, and the utmost regulated
freedom is provided for its excretion at the various points
of exit, until, by increasing age, consequent stiffening of
textures and blockage of spaces, as well as exits, a condi-
tion of comparative stasis ensues as life advances to its
close, and death follows.
EXTRACT II. a.
ON CIRCULATION GENERALLY, AS IT IS TO BE MET
WITH IN THE HUMAN BODY AND IN THE
ECONOMY OF LIFE.
Circulation, regarded from an anatomical point of view,
is commonly applied to the movements of the blood within
its containing vessels, and is accomplished — as is described
by its immortal discoverer, Harvey — by muscular agency,
resident within the walls of the heart and arteries.
Circulation, however, in its widest, minutest, and physio-
logical sense, can be seen in all parts of the body, originating
from, and terminating in, the blood circulation, as well as
in the glands and viscera, and on the free surfaces of the
body, internal and external.
Thus, the alimentary circulation may be described as the
primary or central preparatory circulation, or that by which
the food, solid and liquid, is made available for the main-
tenance of the body, the alimentary canal being at once
the disintegrating, dissolving, circulating, and absorbing
medium by which the chyme and chyle reach the blood
stream, where they are transmuted and transformed into
blood proper.
This primary circulation is supplemented by the aerial
circulation, which is effected through the breathing
apparatus.
The next circulation to be mentioned in this connection
is the lymphatic, a circulation concerned mainly in the
process of collecting the products of tissue waste and of
escaped liquor sanguinis, or blood plasma. These modes
of circulation are concerned in the maintaining of the life
36 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and health of the body generally, with its contained viscera
and attached limbs, except the brain and systemic nervous
system, whose circulation is absolutely sui generis.
Passing to this latter, the brain and nervous system
proper, we find that another series of circulations originates
here, by which the life and integrity of that system are
maintained, and the waste products arising from its exer-
cise and activity removed. Thus, the substance known
as the neuroglia, to which the blood circulation conveys a
matrix of neuronal nutritive material fitted for the growth
and maintenance of the true nervine textures, as well as
for their mechanical support, becomes the scene of the
origin and formation of the various neurons composing
the systemic nervous system.
Surrounding and accompanying these neurons in their
axonal extensions and distribution are their neurilemmar
coverings, which are meningeal continuations, separated
from the nerve fibres by inter-neurilemmar lymph spaces
continuous with the inter-meningeal spaces, and which
establish and carry on circulation of the cerebro-spinal
lymph, conterminously with the nerve-fibre economy, thus
constituting a circulation which is at once protective, insu-
lating, and excretory. This circulation constitutes the
peri-neural lymph circulation, which everywhere surrounds
and accompanies the nerve cells, fibres, and fibrils of the
brain, cord, great nerve trunks, and terminal nerve exten-
sions, and which is actively concerned in the production of
the cutaneous excretion, or sweat, and the maintenance of
a proper supply of intra-cranial and intra-spinal fluid,
besides assisting to form such fluids as the olfactory, oph-
thalmic, otic, oroglossal, gastric, pericardial, pleural, peri-
toneal, and synovial. The residual products, so to speak,
■of cerebro-spinal and neural nutrition and activity are thus
utilised for the upkeep of physiological and anatomical
fluids, so far as is consistent with the maintenance of health,
but in this they unfortunately also may become factors in
the production of pathological processes and substances.
Osmosis and capillary attraction, together with mechani-
cal displacement and gravitation, are mainly concerned in
this form of circulation, and the proper balance of its
physiological and chemical conditions must consequently
ON CIRCULATION GENERALLY 37
be sought for as a means of preserving health along these
lines.
Circulation, as here outlined, in its neural lymph aspect
will be seen to be ultimately all-pervading so far as the
systemic nervous system is concerned, and its sustain-
ment, consequently, is all-important as a factor in systemic
hygiene, while its re-establishment, when in abeyance,,
becomes a sine quo non in the treatment of disease.
Besides what we have said of these great anatomical and
physiological forms of circulation, we may regard it —
circulation — in a still wider and more comprehensive sense,,
as it can be seen and studied in detail in all parts of the
human body and the higher orders of the animal world,
in order to possess a firmer grasp and a fuller appreciation
of the great problems wrapt up in the simple hydrostatics
and hydrodynamics of organised textures.
Thus, we recognise that the three principal circulations,,
or systems of circulation, in the human subject are con-
nected with each other by means of what may conveniently
be called subsidiary or connecting circulations, or sets of
connecting inter-spaces or cells. The first, the gastro-
intestinal, is connected with the second, the blood circu-
lation, by means of the lacteals and the thoracic duct, while
the second is connected with the third, or cerebro-spinal,
through the vasculature of the pia mater> the third, or
cerebro-spinal, again uniting itself respectively with the
blood circulation through the motor, or efferent, nervature
and the gastro-intestinal circulation through the sympa-
thetic " nervi communicant es."
The cerebro-spinal lymph circulation, besides again
allying itself with the other two great circulations, elimi-
nates from the body a large quantity of effete materials
resulting from neural waste, by certain excretory mechan-
isms, these effete materials being gathered from the whole
extra-, inter-, and intra-cerebro-spinal spaces, consisting ot
the sub-dural and sub-arachnoid spaces, the ventricles of
the brain, and central canal of the cord, with the related
peri-vascular and peri-saccular spaces of the neuroglial
matrix, and the whole inter-neurilemmar spaces of the
systemic and related sympathetic nervatures. Such a large
vascular area, if we may use the phrase, circulating a fluid
3 8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
capable of floating the disengaged materials from the entire
central and peripheral nervous system, necessitates the
existence of free and ample excretory facilities for the
maintenance of neural hygiene, and these we find mainly
provided as follows, viz. : The olfactory tracts, bulbs,
nerves, and nasal mucosa, the pituitary gland, and tonsillo-
glosso-pharyngeal mucosa, the filum terminale of the cord,
with coccygeal gland, and related extra- and intra-anal
exits, "modified sweat glands," ductiform exits, and rectal
mucosa, together with the entire system of cutaneous
sweat glands and related sympathetic neuro-lymph exits
wherever existent in texture and viscus.
These great circulations, with their relating subsidiary
circulations, and the many visceral and organismal circula-
tions, are engaged in conveying plastic and fluid materials
along well-defined vascular channels or inter- spaces, and
comprise the circulatory procedure, supplemented by the
aerial circulation, which distributes to the various textural
elements of the body the plasmic materials on which they
live, and which they metabolise by another series of circu-
lations extending to the final one of atomic, or molecular,
dimensions, in which the vital act of tissue integration
takes place, after which, by an inverse circulatory pro-
cedure, the process of disintegration is begun, and con-
tinues until the tissue elements are again devitalised and
restored to the outer world of inorganic matter by the
haemal lymph circulation and its attached excretory
mechanisms, the bowel, the kidneys, the skin, and the
lungs. There are thus two series of excretory organisms
at work in the economy of elimination, respectively
belonging to the cerebro-spinal and blood circulations,
with exit orifices and mechanisms of a more or less com-
plex and specific character, to enable them to perform their
individual functions. We are thus warranted in claiming
the truth of the expression: circulatio circulationum
omnia circulatio!
Speaking generally, circulation of one kind or another
must be regarded as originally all-pervading, and as the
means by which the great processes of digestion, absorp-
tion, sanguification, assimilation, nutrition, disintegration,
secretion, and excretion are rendered possible, in con-
ON CIRCULATION GENERALLY 39
junction with the play of vital force along well-defined
lines, or those of least resistance, throughout all the
structures. These lines or channels are composed, in
many cases, of highly organised hollow structures, in the
form of canals such as the alimentary, of vessels such as
the arteries, veins, and capillaries, of organised tubes such
as the lymphatics proper, of interstitial lymph spaces,
where lymph, or fluid material, first collects through cell
and fibral osmosis, and of the apparently homogeneous
walls of cells, nuclei and nucleoli, which are nevertheless
permeable to or by fluids under the influence of vital
impulse, and in obedience to the chemico-physiological
laws regulating the processes of growth and decay.
Circulation, as we have said, takes place along what
may be called the lines of least resistance, and must be
looked for along those lines only ; thus, along the
alimentary canal, secured by its valves and sphincters,
circulation, under peristaltic compression and compulsion,
is easily accomplished by the highly organised and com-
plex machinery provided in its walls, where a series of
escape tubes is laid down, by which the fluid or less
consistent parts of the contents are run or drawn off,
leaving only a residuum of unutilisable material to be
excreted. Following these escape tubes, we notice that
they converge to form a single large tube, the thoracic
duct, which empties itself into the current of the blood,
where its contents are whirled on through multitudinous
''turnings and twistings" until they reach the structures
for whose growth and repair these elaborate processes are
but preparatory, and where they are disposed of according
to the necessities and by the laws of the process of
nutrition. Once disposed of thus, a reverse, or inverse,
process, viz., that of disintegration, or waste, sets in,
necessitating the provision of a set of collecting spaces
and vessels, whereby the waste products, suspended in
the hsemal lymph, may be collected and conveyed to the
appropriate cardiac and pulmonary areas for re-oxygenation,
and to the excretory organs and surfaces for elimination,
in order to prevent the re-introduction into the healthy
textures of materials which have now become effete, and
therefore toxic. The lymphatic system of vessels here
4o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
takes its origin in the tiny lymph spaces and lacunae (like
the primal springs, trickling streams, and head-waters of
the river systems of the globe) inter-penetrating the
organic units of the various textures — apart from the
brain and systemic nervous systems, these having a
"lymphatic" system of their own. Originating in these
comparatively structureless spaces and inter-spaces, the
lymph streams converge and pursue their course through
a system of at length highly organised vessels, in whose
course is interspersed a series of valves and glands whose
offices seem to consist of maintaining the flow of, and
turning into the current of the blood, an "innocuous and
healthy effluent " stream.
These, in short, constitute the "circulations" or
"systems of circulation" distributed to the head, body,,
and limbs, but they do not include the "circulations"
still to be found within the various viscera, or within the
brain and systemic nervous system.
The brain and systemic nervous system are fed with
blood from the general blood stream in a manner, to-
some extent, we have said, sui generis. Thus, the arteries
are said to enter the central nervous system " naked," sur-
rounded by lymph-filled peri-vascular spaces, and generally
unaccompanied by veins. These peri-vascular spaces are
filled with lymph, or fluid, from the cerebro-spinal inter-
meningeal spaces — and, consequently, by the cerebro-spinal
fluid — which covers and inter-penetrates the whole cerebro-
spinal structures, and which (contrary to our general
teaching on the subject) we contend flows along, and
between, the neurilemmar sheaths of every nerve which
leaves the cranial and spinal cavities to the peripheral
terminations of the sensory nerve fibrils on the one hand,
and the ultimate terminations of the motor nerve fibrils
in the muscles on the other.
We therefore contend that the cerebro-spinal cavity is
not by any means a " shut sac," but, on the contrary, that
it is permeated by at least two openings, continuous with
the sub-arachnoid and sub-dural spaces, and continuous
from their exit from the cerebro-spinal cavity to their
ultimate termination.
In the circulation of the blood in the brain it seems tx>
ON CIRCULATION GENERALLY 41
us that the pabulum required for the support of the
various textures composing that organ is laid down from
the pial capillaries within the neuroglia, and comprises
a large portion of the amorphous material, or stroma, of
the neuroglia ; that the organic matrix of the neuroglia
and the neuronal cells and fibres are sympathetic in origin,
the former being mainly protecting and supporting and
neuronogenetic ; that they together afford the soil and
seed from which the systemic nerve elements proper, or
neurons, originate, grow, and prolong their axonal pro-
cesses, and that the nerve cells proper grow by imbibition
through their dendritic processes with attached gemmules
(like a plant by its rootlets from the soil) from the sur-
rounding neuroglial amorphous materials. What takes
place in this process resembles, and may, in a sense, be
described as a sort of secondary digestion, the gemmules
of the dendritic processes selecting and preparing the
required nutritive materials for their respective nerve cells,
the latter doing the same for their nuclei, and these in
turn for their nucleoli.
The individual cell, with its processes, dendritic and
axonal, its contained nucleus and nucleolus, may, as thus
described, be taken as representative of a typical neuron
or a nerve unit, the multiplication and totality of which
constitute the systemic nervous system. Here, therefore,
comes in the necessity for the provision of an efferent
system of lymph circulation which will carry the results
of nerve waste and disintegration safely out of that
system, and out of the system generally, and will so
prevent the toxic effects likely to follow from the retention
of the "doubly distilled" results of haemoneural "wear
and tear." The system of cerebro-spinal lymph circula-
tion may, therefore, literally be said to run off "brain
sweat" from and through the peri-vascular and connected
peri-neural spaces into the cerebro-spinal intra- and inter-
spaces, or the ventricular spaces, the central canal of the
cord, and elaborated sub-arachnoid and sub-dural spaces,
with the related and continued peri-neural inter-spaces
which, in continuity, accompany the various cephalic and
spinal nerves in their entirety to their outer extremities,
cutaneous and muscular.
EXTRACT II. b.
»
ON THE MINUTELY PARTICULAR, OR NUTRITIONAL,
AND METABOLIC CIRCULATION.
Succeeding the great blood circulation proper, in the
centre of which is situated the great dynamic circulatory
organ, the heart, the neuro-muscular walls of which
propel its life-supporting materials into every ' ' hole and
corner," "nook and cranny" of the entire body, and
commencing at the great organic "watershed" is the
metabolic circulation. The term "watershed," as used
here, is to signify that all the preparatory or preceding
stages of circulation, and all the consequent or succeeding
stages of circulation are subsidiary, and only subservient
to the process of nutritive circulation and metabolic
selection, where the incorporation and detention of the
nutritive protoplasm is relatively, but not really, an
exception to the existence, even in this seemingly solid
and immobile region, of the presence of circulation.
Thus a "watershed" signifies the dividing line which
determines what direction moisture deposited on it must
take in order to reach a level, or the level of the nearest
sheet of water, and ultimately the level of the sea. What
here is not licked up by the wind, or vapourised by the
rays of the sun, after lingering for a brief period in
balanced and pellucid liquidity, or gelid plasticity, like
the arrested molecules of the nutritive pabulum in the
interstices of the tissue matrix, resumes, by the inexorable
influence of gravitation, its onward circulation or progress,
resting not until it has reached its temporary or more
permanent destination, which must be determined by its
ON NUTRITIONAL CIRCULATION 43
environment along the lines of least resistance. A further
resemblance between these natural occurrences, thus
brought together, is that the matter affected and circu-
lating in both instances at this supreme juncture has been
reduced to a molecular or atomic condition, in which
state it is deposited by metabolic selection and a cool
atmosphere respectively on the respective "watersheds"
of living tissue, and arresting earthen elevation or moun-
tain ridge, so to speak. In the case of the organised
textures of the body generally the elements of the
extravasated capillary blood plasma are taken up by the
process of nutrition embodied in and appropriated by
these textures, for a time remaining constituent portions
of them, and again, by katabolic change, being released
from organic union and permitted to resume or to pursue
another but still onward course or circulation, when they
are taken up by the incipient lymphatic vessels and
returned again into the blood circulation. This first stage
of what we may call the katabolic return or inverse
-circulation is thus preceded by what we would denominate
the central or innermost circulation of all, or what is
equivalent to a molecular, or incorporative, (if we may
use the term) circulation, the rate of which must be slow
or quick according to the intensity and volume of integra-
tive or disintegrative tissue changes and vital tissue tone ;
this tissue, or incorporative, circulation being succeeded
by the lymph circulation, which commences on the distal
side of the organic watershed. Contemporary with the
latter ensue quite a number of more limited or circum-
scribed subsidiary circulations, which have been interpo-
lated by or projected from the central circulation, and
which are connected with the nutritive conditions and the
organic preparation of the blood material, as well as with
the separation and elimination of effete materials. IJach
of these subsidiary, or interpolated, circulations is usually
developed in and around a definite glandular organ of
greater or lesser dimensions, sometimes called ductless,
and hence we must infer that the functions of such organs
are related to the work of sanguification, or a process of
modification of the blood constituents of a specifically
vital character, to suit the nutritive exigencies and neces-
44 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
sities of the various textures of the body. Included in
the number of these circulations are the hepatic proper,
apart from the portal, the pancreatic, the splenic, the renal,,
the testicular, and uterine, which modify the blood stream
by the excretion from it of certain vitally active and
certain residual materials, some of which are made avail-
able for certain digestive purposes and perpetuative
functions, while the greater part is absolutely eliminated
from the system. The splenic, the adrenal, the thymus,
the thyroid, with other such but less prominent ductless
glands, being merely modifying organisms developed
within the blood circulatory apparatus, pass through the
blood itself, modifying while not apparently extracting
anything from it.
All these circulations are only concerned in the func-
tions of organic life and the economy of nutrition, and
are entirely dependent on the existence and circulation of
sympathetic nervine energy through cell and fibre agency.
Above and beyond these circulations the higher functions
of systemic nervine circulation are provided for in the
elaborate machinery of the central and peripheral systemic
nervous system ; here the first circulation with which we
are met is the cerebro-spinal lymph circulation, a circula-
tion conterminous with the structural area of that system,,
plus the prolongation into the sympathetic area of the
motor lymph residuum ; while the second or innermost
discoverable is the great compound nervine circulation
proper, which, commencing with the neuro-cellulo-fibral or
neuronal developments, centrally extends to the musculo-
cutaneous textures of the whole body where the circulated
materials terminate in textural incorporation, and final
shedding respectively, as muscle pabulum, on their motor
aspect, and as epidermal exuviae, or debris, on their sensory
aspect.
In this brief survey of circulation, as it is observed in
the human organism, we observe that two distinct systems
of circulation are evolved, or become apparent, namely,
the haemal and the neural, and that each of these circula-
tions displays a central portion in which the phenomena of
nutrition, or of structural integration and disintegration,
take place, the preceding and succeeding circulations, or
ON NUTRITIONAL CIRCULATION 45
-circulative stages being merely vehicular, and subservient
to the great function of nutrition, with its implied meta-
bolism. The processes or phenomena of nutrition being
universally dependent on the economy of circulation, we
perceive that the necessity for the existence of trophic
.centres within the systemic nervous system is lessened or
negatived, and, at the most, is based on the regulation of
the vaso-motor neuro-muscular agencies by the sympa-
thetic nervature, a system of nutritive, or trophic, inner-
vation, which is all-powerful, and sufficient in all living
•organisms not possessed of a systemic nervous system,
with the exception of muscular structures and the textural
elements of the skin, which are dependent for their
nutritive pabulum on the systemic motor and sensory
nervatures respectively.
Broadly, it may be stated that the meso- and hypo-
dermal structural elements are dependent for nutritional
pabulum on circulatory media innervated by the sympa-
thetic nervature, and that the endodermal structural
elements are dependent for nutritional pabulum on the
•circulatory media resident in the central or systemic
nervous system, which, in addition to the possession of
its own nervine energy, is structurally and vitally inner-
vated by the underlying and inter-penetrating sympathetic
nervature. The sympathetic nervature thus continues to
be the great, if not the sole trophic nervature, leaving the
systemic nervature to innervate and control those parts of
the organism to which it is histologically distributed, and
whose nervature is purely systemic, or only secondarily
responsive to sympathetic influence or stimulation.
The media responsible for the circulation of nutritive
materials thus also become the media for the circulation of
vital energy, more especially in the cryptic structural
regions in which the phenomena of metabolism take place,
and where the nutritive processes are wrought out amid
the molecular interstices of the more or less homogeneous
tissues. Metabolism and nutritive circulation in their
terminal stages may, therefore, be regarded as processes
■of physiologico-chemical circulation where the circulation
is reduced in dimensions to the proportions of an atomic
procession into and out of the vitally coherent mass of
46 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
organised protoplasm known as, in this case, a human
body.
In like manner we may pursue the ubiquitous process
of circulation materio-dynamically into the highest regions
of functional activity, or cerebration, where the process
begins and ends, it may be, in a single cell, or a group of
cells, or associated neurons, according to the amount ot
neuronal machinery at work, when, it may be, a thought
or idea is produced in the rough, or perhaps elaborated
and polished, and added to the mental furniture, or circu-
lated into the outer world and made available for future
currency.
Man may, therefore, be said to be really as well as
metaphorically made up of circulations, of "wheels within
wheels," physically and metaphysically, of matter and
energy in endless motion, the exactitude of the material
working, and the perfection and extent of the functional
output of which place him infinitely above his nearest
relations on a platform entirely sui generis, and where it
is impossible to conceive that he has yet exhausted the
series of circulations involved in his materio-dynamic
"genesis" and "exodus." Yea, rather that he is, by the
positive law of inertia, carried vitally on by circulation
when his material and immaterial parts separate into, on
the one hand, inorganic earth, and, on the other, into
potential energy, when the ponderable, or sideral, is left
behind, and when the imponderable and immaterial by ex-
pansion and growth is compelled to circulate ad infinitum.
Thus is illustrated once more the truth of our contention :
circulatio circulationum omnia circulatio. Thus also is
illustrated the fact that matter and force, or energy, are
alike, if not in nature, at least in their subjectivity to the
law of circulation, and that the two entities are mutually
responsible for the phenomena of organic life as it is met
with "on the face of the earth." Moreover, the inorganic
and organic elements of the earth's crust are so intimately
related that the line of demarcation between the two is
sometimes difficult to discover, and both are in their
distinctive manners and degrees amenable and alike sub-
ject to that law, and individually illustrate, so far as we
can perceive, its universality. Thus, astronomically, from
ON NUTRITIONAL CIRCULATION 47
the far distant sideral regions we are made aware by
ethereal circulation of the existence of apparently similar
bodies to that which we now inhabit, circulating in endless
order amid the realms of space, while, geologically, we
discover that from the earliest periods of vital activity, or
at any rate since that vital activity left its traces behind in
the earthy leaves of our mother earth's history, that cease-
less circulation has characterised the matter and energy
of which that earth is composed, and, geographically, we
still observe its continuance, for do we not see it in the
endless process of the denudation of the ' ' everlasting
hills," and the filling up and repletion of the hungry seas,
the reciprocal activities of inorganic and organic matter,
the endless activities of vegetable and animal life, and the
world-wide conveyance by the great human family in its
manifold commercial activities both of the energy and the
matter which lies around it, and which they make sub-
servient to their purposes ? Above and beyond all these
types and forms of circulation, however, rise the vital
circulations observed in plants and animals, and away
beyond these lies a vista of transcendental circulation into
which the most daring imagination can only peer, but
where even scientific faith bids it follow with that trust in
its ultimate realisation and satisfaction which should ever
characterise the earnest enquirer and searcher after truth,
whether in the material and visible world, or in the
immaterial and invisible ; or, in other words, the temporal
and eternal. To return from this metaphysical digression
to a farther consideration of the manner and method of
physical circulation, as observed in plant and animal life,
or organic forms, we are struck with the universality of
distribution of certain natural elements, such as the omni-
present ether, which we possess in common with all nature,
and air and water, which we possess as an individual
planet. The first, or ether, does not at present concern
us, so we shall direct our attention to the latter two, air
and water, and more especially to the last named. Water,
so far as observation has reached, or analysis has revealed,
is universally present in all organic matter, and may be
regarded as a sine qua non in the accomplishment of
organic change, and the production of all physical vital
48 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
phenomena, such as nutrition, growth, and decay. Water
thus is the great vehicle in and by which the necessary
pabulum is conveyed to the expectant textures, the medium
in which they are dissolved, or with which they are
mechanically mixed and prepared for assimilation, and the
agency of exchange in the metabolic arrangements con-
cerned in interstitial or textural nutrition. We have
already written of an incorporative circulation, as being the
central circulation in the great series of circulations, or
-circulatory acts, displayed in the human and allied organ-
isms, as well as in all organic forms, and have claimed for it
that it is no exception to the rule that all is circulation, but
that it is, in particular, the circulation consisting of the
molecular, or atomic, movements of the constituent physio-
logical and chemical elements of which the living tissues
are composed. Water, therefore, must be regarded as the
vehicle by which these physiological and chemical elements
are conveyed for integrative purposes to the tissues under-
going disintegration, or waste, and the medium through
whose agency the phenomena of metabolism are effected,
and that it acts in some such way as the following, viz. :
After solution in, or admixture with, water, the elements
of the nutritive plasma are conveyed by the circulatory
machinery to the various tissues of the organism, where,
by metabolic selection, the necessary nutritive ingredients
are taken from the water, detained to repair the disinte-
grated and cast-off, or effete, ingredients, which must
necessarily have been already, or are now being, swept
away by the preceding column of aqueous solvent, one
molecule, or atom, replacing another in continuous suc-
cession, as the exigencies of tissue waste determine ;
hence is secured what we have already insisted on and
endeavoured to make clear, that the incoming and fresh
are not mixed with the outgoing and effete elements of
metabolic change and exchange, and that the phenomenon
of autotoxis is thereby averted and made impossible in
health. The water, having thus yielded up to the needy
tissues its consignment of nutritive or physiologico-
chemical plasma, is now at liberty to take or ally itself
with and carry away into the lymph spaces and channels
the results of tissue waste, and to convey them to where
ON NUTRITIONAL CIRCULATION 49
the process of excretion can finally deal with them, or to
where the process of haemogenesis can make them avail-
able for farther organic purposes.
As we have said, water is everywhere present, in greater
or lesser proportion, throughout every tissue and organ in
the body, and consequently can penetrate, with more or less
ease, into the molecular interstices of every texture, however
impervious or homogeneous ; we must, therefore, regard
it as absolutely proved, and as a physical necessity, that
circulatory facilities are everywhere afforded and that
circulation does actually take place universally within the
limits of the individual organism. As water is " to the
thirsty ground," so it may be said to be to the living tissue,
but in increased proportion, in accordance with the intensity
of the vital metabolic changes taking place within the
individual tissues. Vessels, channels, or inter-spaces there
must, therefore, be throughout the entire structure of a
living organism, whereby the nutritive materials can be
conveyed to every emptv atomic space of every texture of
the organism, in metabolic exchange for the worn-out, or
effete, atom which, on its displacement, or release, enters
what for distinction may be denominated an efferent
inter-space, channel, or vessel, for final disposal, so as to
obviate obstruction to the afferent atomic circulation and
the occurrence of plasmic stasis, admixture, and consequent
autotoxis, pathological occurrences known to proceed from
certain disease factors observed in mal-assimilation and
perturbed metabolism. Circulation of vitally prepared
protoplasm is thus seen to characterise all physiological
organic processes, and, therefore, all pathological organic
processes, and to make up, in a sense, all the vital processes
concerned in organic life — a realisation, therefore, of the
dynamic factors operating the vast circulatory machinery
involved becomes a scientific work of great proportions as
well as utility. Roughly estimated in their degrees of
importance in the dynamics of organic circulation, as seen
in man and the higher animal kingdom, we would place
foremost in importance the great central engine, the heart,
the influence of which is mainly felt throughout the blood-
vessels proper, but necessarily in decreasing degree to the
remotest circulatory areas embraced within the organism.
D
So BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Perhaps next in importance we should be entitled to place
the creation of molecular and atomic vacua, or voids, by
metabolic or katabolic displacement, due to organic work
and tissue exercise, and their refillment, by the selective
tissue attraction, with fresh molecules and atoms ; while,
following in dynamic importance as promoters of circula-
tion, we are entitled to include pure chemical affinity, or
attraction, and the not inconsiderable influence due to
capillary attractive force amid the nerve-ending intricacies
of fine vessels, tissue porosities, and molecular vacua.
These dynamic agents and others, directed and maintained
by vital energy, constitute the active agencies employed in
the organic circulatory work of every human and high
animal form in the maintenance of its life during its
" allotted span " — their lapse coinciding with its death and
dissolution, their balanced operation constituting health,
their unbalanced, disease.
We might sum up our observations on the subject of
circulation, as thus viewed, by saying that there is but one
circulation within our bodies, and that it consists of
alimentation in all its stages, sanguification, blood circula-
tion proper, nutrition, and excretion, with the almost
countless correlated subsidiary circulations involved in the
phenomena of life.
In thus summing up we have omitted, for the sake of
physiological continuity, to include the aerial, or gaseous,
circulation, which is equally responsible, with this compound
fluid circulation, for the maintenance of life, but more
especially for the more chemical activities engaged within
this circulation, and in the process of metabolic change and
exchange of tissue elements. In the process of sanguifica-
tion the pulmonary aerial circulation plays a most important
part, passing in that most important and essential element
of the whole array of metabolic agencies, viz. oxygen, and
carrying out the redundant carbon, thus maintaining an
uninterrupted process of metabolic change, and an organic
atmosphere, so to speak, of a pure and non-toxic character,
amid which the manifold materio-dynamic activities consti-
tuting life can be carried on in untrammelled order with
the utmost physiological precision and success, and with a
vitally adjusted physical and mental balance. Circulation,
ON NUTRITIONAL CIRCULATION 51
we thus again see, even invades the domain of physiological
or organic chemistry and determines the manner of its
operations and the character of its working — once more
proving the truth of the contention : circulatio circulationum
omnia circulatio.
EXTRACT II. c.
ON CIRCULATION AS ALL-PERVADING THROUGHOUT
THE HUMAN BODY.
We have attempted, somewhat irregularly, in these " ex-
tracts " to trace and describe circulation as the all-pervading
manner of nature s procedure in the disposition of living as
well as dead matter. We have endeavoured to trace the
various circulatory acts and series of vascular and inter-
spatial or interstitial arrangements by which it is carried
out in the animal, and more especially human, economy,
and have satisfied ourselves of the truth of our introductory
contention that all is circulation within the human micro-
cosm. Matter, from its entrance into the body, is in
perpetual motion until its restoration to the outer world in
the form of exhalation, transpiration, exudation, excretion,
and exfoliation, as gaseous, liquid, and solid effete elements,
or residua, its period of relative rest within it being repre-
sented by the temporary individual molecular rest amid its
various tissues and visceral developments, where the dis-
placement of one molecule is followed by the replacement
of another in continuous succession, procession, or circula-
tion, along the lines of least resistance and in obedience to
the operation of the physical law of impenetrability — no
two substances being able to occupy the same space at the
same instant of time. A succession of circulatory acts, or
disposals, of a gradually increasing complexity of detail, lead
up, or forward, to the final act of the molecular incorpora-
tion, or nutritive supply to the various structures of the
body, of the pabulum which they respectively require, and
which they respectively assimilate, and afterwards release by
CIRCULATION AS ALL-PERVADING 53
an inverse process of disintegration and excretory disposal.
To this series of circulatory acts, or disposals of the tissue
pabulum, there comes an exception of a most remarkable
and astounding character, an exception which, in fact,
constitutes a new, but dependent, and higher series of
circulatory acts, or disposals, and which lifts the systemic
nervous system possessed animals into a higher, and distinct,
class of beings, entirely removed from the vegetable, and
lower animal forms, which exist solely in consequence of
their possession of a sympathetic nervous system.
This exceptional system of systemic nerve circulatory
acts, and disposals of nervine tissue pabulum, begins in that
enormous storehouse, or emporium, of the raw material of
nerve protoplasm, provided by the great sanguineous circu-
lation within the matrix of the neuroglia, of brain, cord,
and ganglia, by a process of neuronal absorption, and
onward, and outward, growth of the neuronal fibres, until
their final disposal within, or as, the structural elements of
the skin and voluntary muscles, where the final, or terminal,
acts of excretory disposal ensue.
The acceptance of these views implies, or entails, a belief
in the transmissibility of nerve protoplasm, in fact, all
protoplasm, along fibrillary channels, or fibro-intra-spaces,
wherever situated, and hence the further belief that all
fibres are not solid, but patent, porous, or pervious, some
to the passage of nutritive plasma inwards, and some to
the passage of effete and residual products of the processes
of nutrition and tissue waste outwards, according to their
position in the economy of the great or universal system of
circulation which exists in every organised body. Moreover,
the systemic nervous system of circulation is surrounded by
an insulating and protective circulation of fluid, or lymph,
which is the means, besides, of enabling it to maintain a
process of continuous " ventilation," so to speak, irrigation,
and scavenging, by which the great neuroglial magazine,
or nervine storehouse, and neuronal textures are kept
sweet and clean. This lymph, the cerebro-spinal, has been
described as " a negligible quantity " ; but nothing could
be further from the truth, for does it not provide a buffer-
age against the concussions and frictions of everyday life, a
means, while physiological conditions exist, of maintaining
54 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
an external and internal medium of asepticity and a way of
escape for injured and unfit storage materials, as well as the
results of neuronal tear and wear, for the greatest of all the
viscera, the viscus for which all other viscera exist and work,
the central nervous system in all its parts. It may, therefore,
be inferred from this enumeration of a few of its more
important functions and aspects that this circulation can
alone be maintained and effected by the provision of a
lymph-producing, as well as a circulatory, series of mechan-
isms of a most complete and elaborate description, and
that, therefore, any accident to, or pathological interference
with, it must be attended by the most disastrous conse-
quences.
Thus we see, very imperfectly, but sufficiently clearly
for us to recognise, the necessity for regarding the great
principle of circulation^ as seen especially in the human
economy, as operative and essential in every vital process.
EXTRACT III.
ON THE CHOROID PLEXUSES, AND PIA MATER GENE-
RALLY, AS THE SECRETIVE ORGANS OF THE
CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID.
Our attention having been for a long time given to tracing
and describing the neural lymph and its circulation in, and
throughout, the central and peripheral nervous system, and
working out the role played by that circulation, in ordinary
physiological conditions as well as in the genesis, progress,
and results of the diseases to which that system is liable,
we have often been struck with the thought that such a
circulation, embracing as it does the whole neural lymph
production and disposal throughout the entire areas
embraced by that system, must necessarily — to use a bull —
be derived from somewhere specifically, or from a propor-
tionately large extent, or number, of secreting agencies or
structures. Of these agencies we are satisfied that the
principal is the general vascular mechanism of the pia
mater, which virtually surrounds the whole central nervous
textures of brain and cord, and secretes, or excretes, into
the surrounding and overlying inter-spaces of that system
the proper amount of fluid, when and where required.
This may, speaking generally, be regarded as fully
meeting the requirements of the external aspects and
inter-spaces of the structures filling the cerebro-spinal
cavity, and only very indirectly, and with difficulty, the
central intra-spaces and cavities of these structures ; there-
fore, it would seem to us to require supplementing by
other and internal, or intra-cerebral means, to meet directly
the requirements of the intra-cerebral and intra-spinal
56
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
cavities, or spaces. For this purpose, it appears to us that
the only mechanisms, or organisms, existing within the
central nervous system, available for the purpose, are the
choroid plexuses of the two lateral, third, and fourth
ventricles, which, in fact, are the only non-nervine
structures within the great central cavities of the brain,
Fig. i.— The lateral ventricles opened by removal of the
middle part of the corpus callosum, and the descending
cornu exposed on the right side. ^.
a, b, anterior and posterior parts of the great longitudinal fissure ; c, section of the
anterior part of the corpus callosum ; d, posterior part of the same; e, the left
choroid plexus ; f, the fornix ; g, the anterior ; h, the posterior, and q, the
descending cornu of the lateral ventricle ; k, k, corpora striata ; /, /, optic thalami ;
M, n, right and left hippocampus minor ; o, posterior pillar of the fornix ; v, the
fimhria into which it passes ; q, on the cornu ammonis or hippocampus major ;
h, on the medullary substance of the cerebral hemisphere ; r, part of the grey
cortical substance showing the white stria of Vicq-d'Azyr ; s, taenia semicircularis;
y, eminentia collaterals.
and which represent, or rather, are inflections of the pia
mater with its vascular and connective tissues (Figs, i
and 2). We therefore claim that the function, or at any
rate the main function, of these organs or structures is
that of secretion, or excretion as it might be called, into
the central cavities of the brain, in which they spread out,
of an internal modicum of cerebro-spinal fluid, and that
a constant and physiologically suitable and graduated
ON THE CHOROID PLEXUSES
57
supply of that fluid is thus obtained, which finds its way
throughout the entire intra-spaces of the central nervous
system, after which it commingles with the inter-meningeal
Fig. 2. —View of the upper surface of the velum interpositum,
choroid plexuses, and corpora striata. (From Sappey after
Vicq-d'Azyr.) 3.
i, fore part of the tela choroidea or velum interpositum; 2, choroid plexus; 3, left
vein of Galen partly covered Ly the right ; 4, small veins from the front of the
corpus callosum and the septum lucidum ; 5, veins from the corpus striatum ;
6, convoluted marginal vein of the choroid plexus; 7, vein rising from the
thalamus opticus and corpus striatum ; 8, vein proceeding from the inferior
cornu and hippocampus major; 9, one from the posterior cornu ; 10, anterior
pillars of the fornix divided in front of the foramen of Monro ; n, fornix divided
near its middle and turned backwards; 12, lyra; 13, the posterior pillar of the
fornix ; 14, the splenium of the corpus callosum.
lymph, or fluid, to form the material of the neuro-lymphatic
circulation. In the performance of this function of
lymphogenesis these organs become secondarily a system
of elimination for securing the removal from the intra-
spaces of the brain and cord whatever of neuroglial waste
has found its way thither, besides affording the means
58 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
of such mechanical support and hydraulic force as are
required for maintaining the patency and continuity of
these intra-spaces.
Structurally the choroid plexuses are made up of
inflections, as we have said, or continuations of the pia
mater \ or more exactly of the pia-arachnoid meninges,
supported by their framework of fibro-elastic connective
tissue, and surrounded by inflections of the ventricular
endothelial linings — thus formed, they traverse those
central intra-spaces of the brain known as the two lateral,
the third, and the fourth ventricles. As regards the
functions of these structures, their study may be said to
have hitherto been comparatively neglected, their non-
nervous textures apparently debarring them from that
special attention which their situation otherwise entitles
them to.
The facts that they are highly organised bodies, or
textures, that they occupy a most important central
position amid the most highly organised structures of the
most vital organ of the body, and that they spring from,
and terminate in, the blood circulating media of the brain,
suggest that they must perform some still almost unknown
functions of a vitally important nature in the economy of
the great central nervous system, the discovery of which
must be regarded as of consequently nothing less than the
very greatest scientific interest, and physiological, patho-
logical, and chemical importance.
The choroid plexuses being inflections of the pia-
arachnoid textures into the central cavities of the brain
where no lining pia mater is distributed, secrete or excrete,
into these cavities fluid sufficient to maintain the requisite
amount of moisture therein ; in other words, they distil,
into the intra-spaces of the central nervous system, fluid
sufficient to maintain, in conjunction with the inter-
meningeal fluid, or lymph, the equilibrium of the fluid
pressure within and without that system. A c< give and
take " distribution, or disposal, of the combined fluids, we
take it, existing between the central cavities and the
sub-arachnoid and sub-dural spaces surrounding the brain
and cord, and the connected peripheral nervous system ;
the foramina of Majendie, and the pineal gland, among
ON THE CHOROID PLEXUSES 59
other openings of communication, lending themselves to
its accomplishment. Secretion, or excretion, being thus
effected within the brain by structures organically, or
histologically, continuous with its arachno-pial meninges,
would more than suggest that a like function is performed
by these latter, at any rate by the pial structures, and that
therefore the pia mater, throughout its extra- and intra-
cerebral and entire extent, performs the great function of
keeping fully replenished the extra-, inter-, and intra-spaces
of brain, cord, and nerves, as well as of supplying, in
ordinary physiological conditions, the necessities of the
lymph spaces of eyes, ears, and other continuous spaces.
If this be so, the pia mater performs the double function
of conveying nourishment into, and through, the neuroglial
matrix to the central nervous system, and of maintaining
a fluid medium of protection and support, both within
and without that system, besides maintaining mechanically
the patency of its circulatory lymph paths.
These neural lymph paths, or spaces, consisting of the
ventricles of the brain, the central canal of the cord, the
inter-meningeal spaces surrounding both brain and cord,
and the inter-neurilemmar spaces of the nerves, being, as
we contend, continuous the one with the other, from the
centre to the periphery of the nervous system, and being
supplied from within and from without that system by a
regularly formed and graduated secretion, or excretion,
afford a means of escape to effete and disintegrated
material, unequalled in completeness, extent, and adapt-
ability throughout the entire extent of the excretory
economy of the body, as well as a mechanical support and
bufferage unique in its completeness and efficiency.
On continuing our study of the histology of the choroid
plexuses we have been much struck with their adaptability
to the requirements of glandular structures, and with the
structural arrangement of their true glandular elements,
these being situated mainly on their external aspects, the
excreting cells acting in the manner of, and somewhat on
the same principle as, those of the Malpighian corpuscles,
or bodies, of the kidneys, the lymph, or fluid, distilling
through their respective terminal textures. No doubt
a like function belongs to, and is performed by, the
60 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
pia mater proper generally, more in the manner of the
pleurae, pericardium, and peritoneum.
The formation of the cerebro-spinal lymph being thus
effected, and its renewal and regular supply being thus
secured, by the functional activity of the pia mater proper
and its attached choroid plexuses, let us pursue the study
of it, in its course of circulatory disposal, in its important
functional work within, and without, the nervous system,
and in its final elimination as an excretionary fluid, and
bearer, of effete nervine matter and neuroglial debris.
Before doing so, and departing from the subject of the
pia mater as a secretory medium, we should remark that
its secretory role lies at the foundation of the genesis,
growth, and entire organic integrity of the brain and
nervous system. Thus, from its blood-vessels it distils
the cerebro-spinal lymph from the liquor sanguinis of their
contained blood into the lymph areas, and inter-spaces,
of the entire nerve organism, while at the same time it
deposits, in the matrix of the neuroglia, the nutritive
pabulum for the support of that organism with its
imbedded, and outgrowing, neurons, thus unburdening
itself simultaneously of a double set of materials destined
to perform very different functional roles in the economy
of cerebration and innervation, and nervine work generally.
EXTRACT IV.
A NEW DEPARTURE IN NEUROLOGY, OR AN ATTEMPT
AT THE SOLUTION OF SOME NEUROLOGICAL PRO-
BLEMS.
Cerebrospinal, or neural, lymph secretion, circulation,
and excretion.
The cerebro-spinal, or neural, lymph is a most important
element in the economy of cerebral, spinal, and neural
structure and function, serving the purposes of intra-
cranial pressure regulator, preventer of mechanical friction
and concussion, and carrier out of the nervous system of
the waste and effete materials resulting from nervine "tear
and wear."
In these, and many other functions, it is continually
engaged, so that it is necessarily continually being secreted
by the pia mater on the external surface of the brain and
cord, and by the choroid plexuses, which are inflections of
that membrane into the two lateral, the third, and the
fourth ventricles of the brain, circulated through the
inter-meningeal spaces, the ventricles of the brain, the
central canal of the cord, and the inter-neurilemmar
spaces of the whole systemic nervature, with the related
sympathetic nervous system, and excreted through the
olfactory nerves, the nasal mucosa, the pituitary gland,
and united pharyngeo-glossal mucosa, the filamentum
terminate of the cord, the coccygeal glomerulus, and
related lymph channels particularly, and by the cutaneous
sweat glands generally.
It enters into every space and inter-space of brain, cord,
62 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and nerves, separating and supporting every unit of
structure, nervine and non-nervine, and keeping aseptic
their histological elements, while removing every material
obstruction to functional activity and every detached
particle of waste texture. While thus occupying every
otherwise unoccupied space without and within the whole
nervous system, it is capable of yielding to every special
requirement of every part of that system, like water in
a sponge, and hence on the slightest increase or decrease of
local, or general, pressure it escapes, or returns, along the
lines of least resistance, leaving the true nervine structures
free to functionate and maintain the continuity of sensory
and motor innervation ; thus, if " a determination of
blood to the head" takes place a corresponding determina-
tion of this lymph takes place to the skin, and it may be,
to one or other of the particular excretory agencies, and
so equal intra-cranio-spinal pressure is maintained.
Its circulation may therefore be described as fitful
rather than regular, so as to be at all times available for
emergencies, however sudden or sustained ; moreover,
when the incidence of disease leads to an altered condition
physical, chemical, or bacterial, the vis medicatrix nature
uses every effort, by trying one and then another of the
exits mentioned until either success, or failure, is the result.
It is necessary, however, to call attention here to the
great physiological and histological fact, that another exit
exists from the cerebro-spinal cavity, namely, the efferent
or motor nervature, through which the lymph may escape
into the proper texture of the muscles, and that when it
— the lymph — is septic the occurrence must be followed
by a greater or lesser degree of muscular disablement,
such, for instance, as takes place in many cases of
rheumatism.
When cerebro-spinal lymph excretion keeps pace with
physiological requirements, and when the quality of the
lymph is physiologically pure, it will follow as a physio-
logical result that neuro-psychic health will be maintained
at its highest standard, and that, other physiological
conditions being equal, it will equally follow that a
condition of perfect health will be the result throughout
the whole organism.
A NEW DEPARTURE IN NEUROLOGY 63
The subject embraced in the above heading is a very
large one, but has not hitherto been given that attention
which its importance and extent entitle it to ; neither has
it yet emerged from the subsidiary position of unimpor-
tance assigned to it, or permitted it, by the earlier, and even
modern, observers. The intention, therefore, of the fol-
lowing remarks is to excite, if possible, a greater interest
in the matter for its own sake, and to obtain from it the
practical advantages derivable from a fuller understanding
of its true meaning and import in the maintenance of
innervation, and as an etiological vehicle in the incidence
and spread of disease.
The cerebro-spinal fluid may be said to occupy every
space and inter-space throughout the cerebro-spinal cavity
not occupied by proper nervine structures or the non-
nervine elements related to, or connected with, these. It,
therefore, occupies a position of ubiquity co-extensive with
the distribution of the systemic nervature and its related
sympathetic nervous system, through the interstices of
which it circulates from end to end, sometimes in cisterns,
slowly, and sometimes in thinly attenuated streams, rapidly,
according to the exigencies of biological hydrostatics and
dynamics.
Its secretion may be regarded as the result of capillary
escape of the liquor sanguinis, with which its chemical
composition is almost identical, as the blood circulation
traverses the meshes of the pia mater on the external
surfaces of the brain and cord, or pushes its way through
the cavities of the lateral third and fourth ventricles in the
form of the choroid plexuses.
These latter fulfil for the central spaces of the brain and
cord what the general pia mater fulfils for the sub-arachnoid
and sub-dural spaces, while the fluids respectively secreted
by them unite and form one common fluid, which circu-
lates to and fro through certain communicating channels,
or openings, namely, the foramen of Munro, the pineal
gland, the aqueduct of Sylvius, the foramina of Majendie,
and several lesser openings situated in the descending
cornua of the lateral and the fourth ventricles respectively.
While these openings of communication afford the
means by which the regulation of pressure can be effected
64 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
within, and without, the brain and cord, it follows of neces-
sity that unless a means of escape for the fluid is also
provided, a stasis and over-pressure must ensue, and this
provision we find to exist in the means of peripheral circu-
lation of the fluid and its release when, and where, required
by a continuous system of enclosed, yet open, spaces, or a
lymph vasculature, conterminous with the systemic nervous
system in all its parts, afferent and efferent, or sensory,
and motor, and sympathetic.
This circulatory and excretional provision, by which
every exigency of intra-cranial and intra-spinal pressure is
met by immediate re-disposal or absolute displacement of
the cerebro-spinal fluid, necessitates a belief in the complete
non-existence of a histological and anatomical cerebro-
spinal meningeal " shut sac," inasmuch as a doubly
pervious space in unbroken continuation from the sub-
arachnoid and sub-dural spaces respectively accompanies
every nerve, from its exit from the cerebro-spinal cavity
until it finally terminates in the skin, the muscles, or the
sympathetic system.
Thus, a system of continuous circulation, forwards, or
backwards, according to the prevailing local and general
structural necessities of intracrano-spinal pressure, can be
maintained by an ordered flow, due to the operation of
vital hydrostatics and dynamics along the lines of least
resistance, and not against immovable obstacles, and so the
safety and integrity of the great central nervous system can
be maintained by a definite histological and physiological
means, and not by accident. The truth of these assertions
is based on such facts as that the inter-neurilemmar spaces
can be penetrated to some extent by the injection of fluid
from within the arachnoid membrane, but more especially,
according to my clinical and pathological observations and
experience, that materies rnorbi, or viri, chemical and
material, are allowed to traverse these inter-spaces and are
deposited, at their terminations in the nerve terminals,
causing, it may be, a pathological manifestation there, in
accordance with the nature of the virus and the character
of the nerve terminal distribution in the skin or muscles
involved ; thus alcohol, arsenic, and certain bacteria leave
a trail from the centre to the periphery of the nervous
A NEW DEPARTURE IN NEUROLOGY 6S
system, along the lines of least resistance, which are here
those in continuity with the inter-meningeal spaces, along
the nerve trunks, fibres, and terminals.
In this way we attain a clearer view of the etiology and
pathology of many diseases and morbid phenomena, such
as that of metastasis, which no other means with which I am
familiar will enable us to do. I, therefore, in all seriousness
claim for the practical outcome of the manner and method
of cerebro-spinal fluid circulation and excretion, as an aid
to diagnosis and treatment, a position of great importance.
This claim would be incomplete, however, without a
brief consideration of the subject of cerebro-spinal fluid
excretion and the nature of the excretory mechanisms.
Secreted and circulated in the manner shortly described
above, the cerebro-spinal fluid is brought into contact, more
or less intimate, with every structure of the nervous system,
central and peripheral, and is constantly liable to move-
ment and displacement during its progress from its source
in the pia mater proper and its choroid inflexions, therefore
it must necessarily carry in solution, or suspension, whatever
nervine material is shed into it during its intra-neural flow,
and thus requires the provision of outfall facilities to enable
it to dispose of these effete materials, and thereby, also, to
be the means of mechanically relieving, when necessary,
over intra-cranial and intra-spinal pressure.
The great central organ, the brain, must, from this point
of view, be the structure discharging the greatest propor-
tion of disintegrated and effete material into the cerebro-
spinal fluid, and hence must be safeguarded to a
proportionately great extent ; and this is found to be the
case, for here we find means of escape provided to secure
drainage under all possible combinations of circulatory
circumstances.
Thus, at the anterior aspect of the forebrain we have
two great channels of drainage laid down from the lateral
ventricles through the olfactory tracts, bulbs, nerves, and
Schneiderian mucosa, with subsidiary connections with the
sub-arachnoid and sub-dural spaces, and always more or less
engaged in the work of physiological evacuation.
From the central, or mid-brain, a most elaborate system
of drainage is effected from the third ventricle, through the
E
66 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
infundibulum, the pituitary gland, with which it is encap-
suled, and the mucosa of the buccal cavity, which was
embryonically projected upwards to, and indissolubly
united with, the cerebral downward projection of the floor
of the third ventricle.
A free posterior drainage is effected through the foramen
magnum into the cerebro-spinal cavity externally, and the
central canal of the cord internally, through which the
residuary products of the cerebral waste and overplus fluid
are allowed to gravitate, or be driven along the lines of least
resistance.
The whole spaces and inter-spaces of the brain and its
overlying meninges, being continuous with each other,
allow the passage of cerebro-spinal fluid to circulate in
every direction within, and without, the brain, and to
obtain, whenever necessary, a free but guarded exit —
the Pacchionian bodies providing a series of safety
valves, especially along the roof of the skull, where
drainage is not otherwise provided for.
The posterior extremity of the cerebro-spinal canal is,
in our opinion, provided with a somewhat elaborate, but
intrinsically most ideally perfect, system of drainage,
effected by embryonic metamorphosis during the develop-
mental division and differentiation of the neurenteric
canal, the lumen of the canal being reduced to the
dimensions of the filum terminale of the cord, which
remains porous to the passage of cerebro-spinal fluid, and
the coccygeal gland, which acts as a cystic receptacle, or
lymph heart, provided with a series of " modified sweat
glands " encircling more especially the postero-lateral
aspect of the anus, and of ductiform outlets within the
anus.
Besides these particular exits for superabundant and
effete cerebro-spinal fluid, a great general system of
excretion, or drainage, is provided through the sweat
glands situated more or less plentifully over the entire
surface of the skin, and acting individually and collectively
accordingly as the necessity for the action is local, or
general, the fluid reaching these glands along the inter-
neurilemmar spaces of the nerve trunks, fibres, and fibrils,
where the "terminal" fibrils which reach the glands pour
A NEW DEPARTURE IN NEUROLOGY 67
their surrounding cerebro-spinal fluid into their substance,
to be finally excreted through their ducts on the outer
surface of the skin.
When all these particular and general exits from any
cause, pathological or otherwise, become unavailable, and
when the cerebro-spinal fluid is driven along the remain-
ing lines of least resistance, it is, of histological necessity,
compelled to find its way along the motor nervature, local
or general, according to excretional necessity, into the
substance of the muscle, or muscles, there to set up, it may
be, a pathological process which may lead to the production
of a definite disease, such, for example, as rheumatism.
These arrangements, in short, constitute the cerebro-
spinal fluid drainage system, except where it escapes into
the neighbouring sympathetic nervous system, and where,
if it be septic, pathogenic processes of a far-reaching
character may be initiated and evolved, more especially in
the way of structural and visceral disease.
It will thus, if these observations be true, be seen by
those who are bold enough to take up the subject with a
view to test it worth, that our estimate of it is warranted
on anatomical, histological, and physiological grounds, and
if so, that it is fraught with practical bearings on the pro-
gress of medicine and surgery, and is bound to become an
instrument by which the incidence and evolution of many
very obscure neural pathological problems may be rendered
much clearer, and indications for their treatment, curative
and ameliorative, be more scientifically secured.
Moreover, such traumatic, or morbid, incidents as " the
spontaneous escape of cerebro-spinal fluid from the nasal "
and other " passages," and the incidence of herpetic vesi-
culation of the skin, and eruptive cutaneous phenomena
generally, find a physiological, and therefore natural and
true explanation, on lines determined by anatomical and
histological continuity of structure, and, what we may
legitimately call, a circulatory vasculature.
EXTRACT V.
ON CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH CIRCULATION AND
EXCRETION.
A system of circulation having been traced throughout
the whole extent of the nervous system, both central and
peripheral, and the means indicated whereby the cerebro-
spinal fluid, or lymph, is distributed to the most remote
terminations of the individual fibrils, its secretory appa-
ratus, or " fountain of supply/' also having been pointed
out, whereby it is kept constantly renewed, the reasonable-
ness of, and the necessity for, these arrangements become
more and more apparent and convincing ; the study of
its physiological uses, its pathological bearings and clinical
applications, in our opinion, therefore, call for a share in
the work of research now so active throughout the "world
of medicine and surgery."
The various systems of circulation shortly alluded to,
or described, in certain earlier studies are all finally sub-
servient to this the nervine system of circulation. The
circulation of the food, solid as well as liquid, of the chyle,
of the blood, and of the lymph, besides the respiratory
aeration, and many other minor circulatory acts performed
throughout the various viscera and organs included in the
human body, lead up to the final neuro-systemic circulatory
acts of the supply of pabulum to the nervine structures,
and the laying down of a medium of mechanical support
and protection to these structures. For from the blood,
we contend, are deposited in the matrix of the neuroglia,
and not transferred directly to the neuronal structures,
the materials on which the growth and nutrition of the
ON CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH
69
cells and fibres of the systemic nervous system are
dependent, and in which they " take root " and grow —
grow as plants grow from the soil in which they have
been sown, or planted, and — to follow out the comparison
— much in the same manner as we observe in such plants
as those of the strawberry family, the primary cerebral
cell representing the original unit, seed, or plant, and the
Fig. 3. — Transverse section through the brain and skull made
whilst frozen. (Key and Retzius. ) £.
, corpus callosum ; below its middle part the septum lucidum, and below that
again the fornix ; L V, lateral ventricle ; th, thalamus ; between the two thalami
the third ventricle is seen ; below the thalamus is the substantia innominata ;
str, lenticular nucleus of the corpus striatum ; c, caudate nucleus of the same ;
between th and str is the internal capsule ; outside str is the thin grey band of
the claustrum, and outside this again the island of Reil at the bottom of the
Sylvian fissure ; n. a. nucleus amygdalae ; immediately within this is the optic
tract seen in section ; /, pituitary body ; />, body of the sphenoid bone ; sa,
subarachnoid space ; v, villi of the arachnoid.
various ganglionic cells, developed throughout the spinal
and other ganglionic centres, the secondary and semi-
independent group of plants related to the parent unit.
(Figs. 3, 8, 9, 10, 11).
Moreover, in the development and evolution of the
nervous system within the embryo, a process of neuronal
growth, somewhat akin, in its various stages, to the
progress of a creeping plant, may be said to take place,
which terminates only when the whole embryonic areas
7o
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
have been over-spread, inter-penetrated, and organically, or
texturally, arranged from centre to periphery.
The component parts of the systemic nervous system,
cellular and fibrous, wherever distributed, are united into
one organism under the control of the highest and higher
Fig. 4. — The cranium opened to show the falx of the cerebrum
and tentorium of the cerebellum, and the places of exit
of the cranial nerves. |.
I, falx ; 2, superior longitudinal sinus ; 3, concave border of the falx ; 4, inferior
longitudinal sinus ; 5, base of the falx ; 6, straight sinus ; 7, anterior part of the
falx ; 8, right side of the tentorium cerebelli, seen from below ; 9, lateral sinus ;
10, superior petrosal sinus; n, inferior petrosal sinus", 12, posterior occipital
sinus; 13, falx cerebelli; 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth
cranial nerves; 19, seventh and eighth nerves; 20, ninth, tenth, and eleventh
nerves ; 21, twelfth nerve ; 22, 23, first and second cervical nerves ; 24, upper
end of the ligamentum denticulatum.
centres — representing the peculiar, or central, haunt of the
neuro-vital principle, or life — but are capable of exercising
functions determined and directed by the lower centres
for local, as distinguished from general and communal,
purposes. Studied in detail, each of these parts is found
to be composed of a multitudinous series of cells united
to each other by processes, either of continuity, or in
ON CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH
7i
contiguity, and with the different parts of the body,
through axonal fibres (Fig. 4) and interpolated ganglia
and ganglionic cells, the entire parts being divisible into
the systemic and connected sympathetic areas — these two
areas being intimately related by histological continuity,
although to a great extent independent of each other in
their respective functional roles. The two systems,
however, constitute a united congeries of structures of
unbroken histological continuity, or intimate contiguity,
/—
Fig. 5. — Section of the spinal cord within its membranes (upper
dorsal REGION. (Key and Retzius.) Magnified.
a, dura mater ; b, arachnoid ; c, septum posticum ; d, e,f, subarachnoid trabeculae,
those &tf,f, supporting bundles of a posterior nerve-root ; g, ligamentum denti-
culatum; h, sections of bundles of an anterior nerve-root; k, I, subarachnoid
space.
arranged within a definite series of protective and
insulating media, known according to the various parts
of the nervous system involved, as the meninges of the
brain and cord, and the neurilemmar coverings of the
nerve trunks and fibres, separated by a series of inter-
spaces, continuous and conterminous with them, which
are in turn filled by a fluid, commonly described as the
cerebro-spinal (Fig. 5).
This fluid, the cerebro-spinal, has hitherto been mainly
regarded as confined to the inter-meningeal spaces of the
brain and cord and the intra-cerebro-spinal spaces (the
ventricles and central canal), and has had a very limited
72
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
functional role assigned to it. These views we now more
and more consider altogether inadequate for the following
amongst other reasons, viz. because the quantity of the
fluid formed is much larger than is usually supposed,
being constantly produced by the entire secreting surfaces
and vasculature of the pia mater covering the brain and
Fig. 6.— Section of the posterior and lower parts of the brain
within the skull, to exhibit the subarachnoid spack and
its relation to the ventricles. (After Key and Retzius.)
The section was made in the frozen state, the cavities having been previously filled
with injection.
i, i', atlas vertebra ; 2, odontoid process of the axis, 2' ; 3, third ventricle ; 4, fourth
ventricle; C, C, corpus callosum? C, gyrus fornicatus ; C, cerebellum; t, ten-
torium ; p, pituitary body; c, c, central canal of the cord ',/M, in the cerebello-
medullary part of the subarachnoid space, is close to the foramen of Majendie
by which that space communicates with the fourth ventricle.
cord, besides the appendages known as the choroid
plexuses (of the two lateral, the third, and the fourth
ventricles), and because it fills the entire series of extra-
and intra-spaces of the various structural divisions of the
central (Figs. 6 and 7) and peripheral nervous system, the
which, therefore, necessitate the formation and continual
presence within the body of a very great quantity of
cerebro-spinal fluid, and the provision of a series of safety
ON CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH
73
valves, excretory organs, or eliminatory mechanisms, which
are found more or less abundantly distributed in the skin,
the mucous and serous membranes, and the muscular
structures, as well as viscera. Moreover, in the structures
known as the olfactory nerve mechanisms, the pituitary
and pineal glands, and the coccygeal glomerulus, with
their associated outfall tubular arrangements and organisms,
we discover structures whose conjoined functions, besides
Fig. 7.
Fig. 8.
Fig. 7.— Two portions of medullated nerve fibres, after treat-
ment WITH OSMIC ACID, SHOWING THE AXIS-CYLINDER, AND THE
medullary and primitive sheaths. (Key and Retzius. )
A, Node of Ranvier. B, Middle of an internode with nucleus.
c, axis-cylinder, projecting at the hroken end ; p, primitive sheath within which the
medullary sheath, which is stained dark by the osmic acid, is somewhat retracted.
Fig. 8.
-Part of an axis-cylinder, highly magnified, showing the
varicose fibrils composing it. (Max Schultze.)
the disposal of the more solid nerve debris, largely consist
in regulating the incidence of intra-cranial and intra-spinal
pressure, by affording a ready, albeit manifoldly guarded
and regulated means of exit to the cerebro-spinal fluid.
By these means and a vaso-motor controlled blood-
circulation, sensitive to inward and outward circumstances
and necessities, an atmosphere, so to speak, of cerebro-
nervine calm and repose is maintained amid the most
changing conditions of an ever-fluctuating environment.
Besides the somewhat mechanical role here described as
74
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
belonging to the cerebro-spinal fluid, we must not forget
that we shall justly attribute to it besides a most
important excretory function, in that it bathes and washes
the individual nerve units, or neurons, as well as the
collective nervous system, collecting the worn and escaped,
or disintegrating, material, and floating it out through the
numerous exits provided.
Fig. 9.
Fig. 9.
-Varicose medullated fibres from the root of a spinal
nerve. (From Valentin.)
Fig. 10. — B, Diagram to show the parts of a medullated fibre.
i, 1, outer ox primitive sheath enclosing the doubly contoured -white substance or
medullary sheath ; 2, a part where the white substance is interrupted, the outer
sheath remaining ; 3, axis cylinder projecting beyond the broken end of the
tube ; 4, part of the contents of the tube escaped.
In the performance of these excretory functions within
the economy of the nervous system, we think we perceive
at work a double, or composite, set of organisms, viz. a
pituitary set for the removal of the more solid, and
a serous set for the removal of the more fluid materials,
finding an entrance into the cerebro-spinal lymph spaces.
To the first of these belong the olfactory, besides the
pituitary body, and it may be the coccygeal body ; and to
the second the pineal body, and the various sweat glands
ON CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH
75
of the skin, while to a third, we may infer, belong the
sebaceous glands of the skin, as well as some of the
glandular structures distributed throughout the intestinal
canal and elsewhere. In the last mentioned may some-
times be included the pituitary gland and nasal mucosa,
because their functions are regulated and determined by
the consistency of the materials supplied to them for the
Fig. ii. — Right half of the brain divided by a vertical antero-
posterior section (from various sources and from nature). (Allen
Thomson.) ^.
1.2, 3, 3#, 3^, are placed on convolutions of the cerebrum ; 4, the fifth ventricle, and
above it the divided corpus callosum ; 5, the third ventricle ; 5', pituitary body ;
6, corpora quadrigemina and pineal gland ; +, the fourth ventricle ; 7, pons
Varolii ; 8, medulla oblongata ; 9, cerebellum ; 1, the olfactory bulb ; II, the right
optic nerve ; in, right third nerve.
time being. Thus we see that the olfactory mucosa
during the prevalence and progress of a catarrh, some-
times discharges a fluid, sometimes a viscid material, and
sometimes a compound of both.
Therefore should the physiological balance in con-
sistency and means of exit of this fluid — the cerebro-spinal
— be to any considerable extent, or for any lengthened
period disturbed, it becomes self-evident that the end
must be a pathological condition, characterised as to
incidence, and nature, according as the disturbance
76 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
involves the liquid or more solid elements of the fluid,
under either, or both, of which conditions the indications
are, in a word, to obtain and maintain the " freedom of
exit."
As types of the pathological conditions resulting
respectively from a disturbed condition of the pituitary
and serous elements of the cerebro-spinal fluid respectively,
we would mention acromegaly and acute rheumatism.
EXTRACT VI.
ON NERVINE, OR NEURONIC, SECRETION, AND INTRA-
FIBRAL CIRCULATION OF THE WHITE, OR MEDUL-
LARY, AND THE AXIS CYLINDER SUBSTANCES,
AND ON THE STRUCTURE OF SYSTEMIC NERVE
FIBRES, WITH THE "NODES OF RANVIER."
As bearing on, and dovetailing with, the subject of
maintaining a proper circulation and " pressure equi-
librium " within and without the nervous system in its
widest aspects, a few of the ways in which excretion is
secured from that system may be shortly described, in
supplement of what has already been incidentally said
when alluding to the details of cerebro-spinal circulation
and excretion. The first in prominence, and to some
extent in importance, is the nasal excretion or discharge,
which is more or less constant, and abundant under
ordinary circumstances, but which may, in response to the
stimuli of sneezing, blowing, and rubbing of the nose, be
supplemented as occasion requires (Fig. 12).
The second consists of the tonsillo-glosso-pharyngeal
mucosa, and represents the local outfall, or outflow, of the
pituitary gland (Fig. 15). The third may be described
as the anal, or perineal, and may be said to be due to
gravitation and capillary force, aided and increased by the
movements of the lower extremities when in activity, and
regulated by the action of the muscular texture of the
coccygeal body and overlying anal musculature. While
the fourth, and greatest in extent, may be denominated
the general one, that is, through the peripheral endings
of the nerve fibrils throughout the body, as illustrated
78 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
by ordinary transpiration and perspiration, both general
and local.
In other words, the process of excretion of nerve debris
would seem to us, on continuing the study of its-
mechanisms, to be affected through several channels in
particular, and through the nerve endings, motor and
sensory, in general, the particular channels being the
olfactory tracts and nerves, the glosso-pharyngeal, or
Fig. i2.— View of the anterior surface of the pons varolii and
MEDULLA OBLONGATA, WITH A SMALL PARTICLE OF CORD ATTACHED.
a, a, pyramids ; b, their decussation ; c, c, olives ; d, d, restiform bodies ; e, external
arciform fibres, curving round the lower end of the olive ; f, fibres described by
Solly as passing from the anterior column of the cord to the cerebellum ; g,
anterior column of the spinal cord ; h, lateral column ; p, pons Varolii ; i, its
upper fibres ; v, v, roots of the fifth pair of nerves.
pituitary, excretory mechanism, and the coccygeal gland
and associated structures, with, it may be, the axillary
glands, so far as they are related to the systemic nervous
system and certain cutaneous surfaces, particularly between
the toes and fingers ; the odoriferous qualities of the excre-
tion in these latter regions, howsoever produced, whether
from haemal, or neural, sources, or both, pointing to high
toxicity, and the consequent necessity for its immediate
elimination from the system, or before it has had an
opportunity of rejoining and contaminating the returning
haemal lymph streams.
ON NERVINE SECRETION
79
The general cutaneous surface (Figs. 16, 17, 18) may
be said to afford the largest area for the requirements of
the economy of systemic nervine excretion. It will be
observed, however, in this enumeration of eliminatory
means, that apparently no provision is thereby provided
for the excretory necessities of the sympathetic nervous
system. This, however, we think can only be apparent,
not real, because its trophic functions demand the fullest
excretional facilities which can be afforded, and on the free
Fig. 13.— Section of the upper part of the brain and meninges
TO SHOW THE RELATIONS OF THE ARACHNOIDAL VILLI. (Key and
Retzius.) Magnified.
c, c, corpus callosum ; /, falx cerebri ; s.a, subarachnoid space, pervaded by a net-
work of fine trabeculae ; from it the fungiform villi are seen projecting into the
dura mater. Some are projecting into the superior longitudinal sinus, s.
surfaces of the skin, and of the mucous and serous mem-
branes lining the various cavities of the body, as well as
on the various synovial surfaces of the joints and bursae,
and through the great excretory organs, the kidneys. It
will thus be seen that the sensory side of the nervous
system proper, and the sympathetic system, are provided
with an abundant and ready means of relieving themselves
of their waste products, but that the motor side of the
nervous system proper is not correspondingly provided
for. When, however, we consider the matter in its
details we think we will be able to see that excretion even
here is effected by and through the terminal nerve fibrils,
8o
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
within the substance of the muscular structures to which they
are distributed (Figs. 19, 20).
The neurilemma? surrounding the motor nerve-terminal
fibrils become continuous with the sarcolemmae of the
Fig. 14.— Base of the brain with the origins of the cerebral
nerves. (Allen Thomson.) $.
This figure is taken from an adult male brain which had been hardened in alcohol.
1, superior longitudinal fissure ; 2, the olfactory tract and sulcus ; 2', orbital con-
volutions ; 2", inferior frontal convolution ; 3, 3, 3, fissure of Sylvius ; 4, 4, 4,
temporo-sphenoidal lobe ; 5, 5', occipital lobe ; 6, on the right anterior pyramid
of the medulla oblongata above the decussation ; 7, amygdaloid lobe of the cere-
bellum ; 8, biventral lobe; 9, slender lobe; 10, posterior inferior lobe; +, the
inferior vermiform process ; I, olfactory bulb ; I', the tract divided on the left
side ; II, in the anterior perforated spot, marks the right optic nerve ; the left has
been cut short ; III, on the right crus cerebri, denotes the third nerve ; IV, the
fourth nerve; V, the fifth; VI, on the pons Varolii, the sixth; VII, also on
the pons Varolii, the facial with the auditory nerve on its outer side ; XI, on the
cerebellum below the flocculus, indicates the spinal accessory nerve ; between it
and the auditory are seen the glosso-pharyngeal and the vagus; XII, on the
upper part of the left amygdaloid lobe, denotes the hypoglossal nerve ; C1, on
the same, the suboccipital nerve.
various muscular fibres on which they are spread, or with
which they are connected, the terminal organs, or " muscle
plates " excreting into the substance of these structures
their entire contents, and, consequently, their effete
ON NERVINE SECRETION
81
materials, or such as find their way along that side of the
systemic nervous system. Here the general lymphatic
circulatory system, as distinguished from the cerebro-
spinal lymph circulatory system, takes up the function of
removal or scavenging, of the materials so excreted, as
well as of those resulting from muscular action and tear
and wear, and, combining them, removes them to the
great blood stream for final disposal — the lymph spaces,
Fig. 15.
Fig. 16.
Fig. 15.— Magnified view of a sweat gland, with its duct. (Wagner.)
«, the gland surrounded by fat-cells; b, the duct passing through the corium; c, its
continuation through the lower, and d, through the upper part of the epidermis.
Fig. 16.— Developing sweat glands from a seven months' foetus.
Magnified 50 diameters. (Kolliker.)
«, horny layer of the epidermis; b, Malpighian layer; d, rudimentary gland; e,
lumen of the duct, opening at/" upon the surface of the skin.
channels, vessels, and glands of the lymphatic circulation
proper, each contributing their " quota " of conveying and
sorting of the refuse material.
The distribution of the systemic motor nerve fibres and
fibrils, as well as the sympathetic motor filaments, is
virtually to every muscular fibre and fibril in the body,
whether striped, or unstriped, and suggests, as elsewhere
stated, the thought that these motor nerve fibrils might
convey to the sarcous elements of the muscular system
universally, nutritious material, as well as force, or impulse,
F
82
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
which thought further suggests that toxicity of that supply
of material would result in pathological disturbance of the
muscular structures to which the nerves affected were
communicated. Thus, it might be inferred that such a
disease as rheumatism might, and most likely does, arise
from a contaminated, or toxic, supply of neural excretion,
or, as we contend, nutritive plasma, and that the pain and
stiffness characterising that disease are due to the convey-
ance, or circulation, of a certain materies morbi from the
nerve endings into the muscular structures involved.
Fig. 17.— Nerve-ending in muscular fibre of a lizard (Lacerta
viridis), according to KOhne. (Highly magnified.)
a, end-plate seen edgeways ; b, from the surface, s, s, sarcolemma ; p, p, expansion
of axis-cylinder. In /; the expansion of the axis-cylinder appears as a clear
network branching from the divisions of the medullated fibre.
Rheumatism will, therefore, most likely be found to be,
and we think is, a disease primarily of the nervous system,
and not of the blood, the blood becoming secondarily
affected through, or by the removal into it of, this toxic
matter, through the agency of the lymphatics returning
from the affected muscles, or by direct imbibition of the
tainted material, or materies morbi^ by the blood-vessels
supplying them. But this is a digression into the patho-
logical aspect of the subject of circulation which can be
more consistently dealt with when we reach the clinico-
pathological stage ; we shall, therefore, resume the study of
neural circulation, extra- and intra-. But the extra-neural
circulation having already been considered in some detail
ON NERVINE SECRETION 83
in this and previous studies, we shall first proceed to
discuss the nature of what we, by a use of u scientific
licence," may call the intra-neural circulation.
The intra-neural circulation, if circulation it can truth-
fully be claimed to be, is, like the extra-neural circulation,
of a duplex character, and it consists of the necessarily
limited movements within more or less completely closed
Fig. 18.— Termination of a nerve in a muscular fibre of the
lizard (Lacerta viridis). (Ranvier.) Very highly magnified.
h, outer sheath of the nerve-fibre (sheath of Henle, according to Ranvier) ; b, bifur-
cation of the fibre; e, node; m, short segment beyond the node; r, terminal
ramifications of the axis-cylinder ; n, nuclei on the branches of the axis-cylinder ;
«', nuclei in the granular substance of the end-plate. The granular substance
lies in the intervals between the branches of the axis-cylinder; it is not seen in
this figure.
vessels of plastic, or semi-fluid, substances as represented
by, in the first place, the " white substance of Schwann,"
and, in the second place, by the substance of the " axis
cylinder" (Figs. 8, 9).
The intra-neural, or axonal, circulation is necessarily,
therefore, entirely different from the extra-neural circulation,
inasmuch as it consists of the movement of that substance,
or those substances, which may be described as truly
nervine within the walls of the nerve cells and the lumina
of the nerve fibrils, which latter are bi-tubular and may be
84 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
slow, or rapid, according to the condition of the body in
relation to rest and movement, and according to the
activity of the sanguineous circulation and the mental
organism (Figs. 18, 19).
This circulation is molecular and capillary, and is
effected by the usual forces operative under such circum-
stances, plus the influences due to vitality, in each of
which respects it may be compared to the " ascent of the
sap " and kindred movements in plant life.
The substance composing the axis cylinder of nerve
fibril (Figs. 8, n), or what we may call the true
nervine substance, is of consistency sufficient to prevent
Fig. 19.— Part of a section of one of the funiculi of the sciatic
nerve of man. Magnified (after Key and Retzius).
P, Perineurium, consisting of a number of closely arranged lamellae. En, processes
from the perineurium, passing into the interior of the funiculus, and becoming
continuous with the endoneurium, or delicate connective tissue between the nerve-
fibres. The connective tissue fibrils of the endoneurium are seen cut across as fine
points, often appearing to ensheath the nerve-fibres with a circle of minute dots
(fibril-sheath of Key and Retzius). Numerous nuclei of connective-tissue cells are
imbedded in the endoneurium ; v, section of a blood-vessel.
rapid movement, but is yet sufficient to allow of
considerable molecular and mechanical displacement, and
hence circulation ; as, for example, when a nerve trunk is
pressed upon for some time its nerve fluids, or its intra-
fibrillar contents, become discontinuous to such an extent
as to prevent the passage of the usual nerve force
currents until their continuity is again restored, which
usually requires an appreciable time. The axis cylinder, or
true nervine substance, is surrounded by a coating, or con-
taining wall, of neurokeratine, which, in turn, is overlaid by
a continuous covering of the " white substance of Schwann"
enclosed by its containing, or primitive, sheath, also
composed of neurokeratine (see figure 8, page 73). The
continuity of this insulating and protective covering, or tube,
of " the white substance of Schwann," or medullary sub-
ON NERVINE SECRETION 85
stance, is said to be interrupted by the " nodes of Ranvier "
(Figs. 8, 20), but we contend that this is only apparent and
not real, and that the apparent interruption is due to the
compression, but not to the complete interruption, of its continuity
exercised by those nodes, and thus, moreover, is secured
the apparent raison d'etre of this insulating protecting
medium. The axis cylinder being necessarily for func-
tional purposes, continuous from source to termination in
its fully formed or normal condition within each neuron,
and depending for its integrity on the completeness of its
surroundings and insulating structures, we feel ourselves
warranted in inferring that the "white substance of
Schwann," with its containing sheath or neurilemma, is also
Fig. 20.— A small bundle of nerve fibres from the sympathetic
nerve. (Key and Retzius.)
The bundle is composed of pale nerve-fibres, with the exception of the fibre m, m,
which is enclosed here and there by a thin medullary sheath ; «, «, nuclei of
pale fibres.
continuous, although the apparent interruptions in its
course caused by the occurrence of the " nodes of
Ranvier" seem to militate against that view. Thus,
circulation of a somewhat limited extent is possible here,
and, we think, required to maintain the continuity, and
hence the vitality, of this viscous, but yet fluid, substance,
and we, therefore, regard it as adding one more to the far
from exhausted series of human corporeal circulations.
Our reference to the "nodes of Ranvier" and our
expression of dissent from the received opinion regarding
their complete interruption of the continuity of the
medullary or " white substance of Schwann," necessitate
we think a further reference and, if possible, a fuller
explanation of the questions involved. The " nodes
of Ranvier " are histologically well-defined structures,
occurring at certain, but varying, intervals, along the
86 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
course of a large portion of the peripheral nerve fibres,
comprising the nerve trunks of a great proportion of the
systemic nervous system, and it may be certain com-
municating filaments of the sympathetic system, and being
thus so well defined and so widely distributed, we must
suppose that they possess functions and perform a duty,
or duties, static or dynamic, in the complicated economy
of the nervous system. We must, consequently, proceed
to assign a use, or function, to the " nodes of Ranvier,"
and in doing so we must observe that a tube like the
containing sheath of the " white substance of Schwann,"
and of the axis cylinder substance, must be subjected to
great strains from external pressure, as well as from the
disrupting influence of bulging from within due to
disturbances of the continuity of their contents, which, we
may take it, are usually in a semi-fluid state. We
therefore consider ourselves warranted in regarding these
structures, these " nodes of Ranvier," as circular supports
developed in, and around, the substance of the primitive
membrane, or containing wall, of the " white substance of
Schwann, " in the manner of strap and buckle arrangements
of their constituent material ; and that it is further
possible to recognise, as the agents in their production,
growth, and continuation, the " nerve corpuscles " or
" cells " distributed along the course of the same mem-
brane.
If this strengthening or supporting function of these
" nodes " be granted it is no longer a matter of surprise or
wonder that a peripheral- or systemic-nerve- or trunk- is
such a resisting structure, and that the continuity of the
axis cylinders of its component fibres is so admirably
maintained and ensured. The " nodes of Ranvier " must
therefore rank as adaptations of texture to meet special
emergencies of the greatest importance. But it seems to
us that besides the function of support performed by the
u nodes of Ranvier " to the sheath of Schwann, they also
may be regarded as valves (Fig. 20) in the circulation of
the " white substance of Schwann," and axis cylinder
substance within their sheaths, allowing of the passage of
these substances towards the periphery of the nervous
system, but opposing a barrier to their regurgitation or
ON NERVINE SECRETION 87
backward Row (Fig. 21), thus securing the integrity of the
nerve cells, cerebral and ganglionic, against mechanical
pressure and violence, besides aiding in procuring the
outlet, or the excretion, of the materials secreted by, and
produced in, the nerve cells with their waste products.
The "white substance of Schwann" and its sheath, with
the associated " nodes of Ranvier," thus act in the triple
capacities of insulating, supporting, and protecting
agencies. The occurrence of pain, it might here be
remarked, as a nerve phenomenon as well as a symptom
of disease, is bound up with the maintenance of the
integrity of these structures, and consequently pain may
thus be expected to be felt where they are naturally thin,
— . ^
'/%■
-
ZJtZZ
i%
^K*^ _
a
r
Fig. 21.— Nerve-fibres stained with nitrate of silver to show
frommann's markings in the axis-cylinder. (Ranvier.)
A, Fibre showing a node, a, with the constricting ring. The axis-cylinder has
become shifted, and the part which was opposite the node and which is stained
by the silver, is now below it ; r, conical enlargement of the axis-cylinder.
B, Isolated axis-cylinder.
as at the distal terminations of the peripheral nerve fibrils
in the cutaneous envelope of the body, where the u white
substance of Schwann " is said to be usually absent or
sparsely distributed, and in the substance of tissues and
organs, where sensory nerve fibrils more or less likewise
terminate. It may also be expected to be felt wherever
the continuity of these protective tissues is interfered with
by pressure, or injured by traumatic influences : pain,
moreover, in itself may be regarded as a molecular
disturbance of the material of the axis cylinders of the
nerve fibrils involved, initiated, and realised, or felt, at the
spot, or conveyed outwards to the distal terminations of
the involved fibrils from the initiating central, or proximal,
nerve fibre indirectly or reflexly, so to speak, from the
lower centre with which it is related.
EXTRACT VII.
ON CIRCULATION IN ITS GENERAL NERVINE BEAR-
INGS, AND "CIRCULATIO CIRCULATIONUM OMNIA
CIRCULJTIO."
In describing the bond of union, or connection, between
the circulation of the blood proper, and, what we have
called the cerebro-spinal, or nervine, circulation, let us
begin with the cerebral capillaries by which the brain
pabulum is laid down amid the neuroglial matrix or
stroma, where the true nerve elements, as neurons, take
their origin and grow. These vessels, by a process of
osmosis through their walls, exude this nutritive material
into the neuroglial matrix in the more or less amorphous
form in which the neurons, it seems to us, take it up, by
their dendritic processes and attached gemmules(Fig. 2 2), as
distinguished from their axonal processes and cell walls,
these latter being mainly insulating and protective, and
surrounded by peri-saccular and peri-axonal lymph spaces.
Within the matrix of the neuroglial tissue it seems to us
that the terminating peri-vascular spaces, and incipient or
nascent peri-saccular and peri-neural spaces, merge or unite
and " give and take," thus joining the peri-vascular and the
peri-neural lymph circulation into one u system of circula-
tion." In other words, we see here a circulation which
secures that the brain and cord and nerves are floated in
lymph, or fluid, that they are supported by a column of
fluid internally, and that the entire substance of the
neuroglia wherever existent, in brain, or cord, or ganglionic
enlargement, is inter-penetrated by the same. Thus are
provided support and protection, with facilities for nutri-
CIRCULATION IN ITS NERVINE BEARINGS 89
tion and elimination, all of which are of the most vital
importance to these the most important organs of the
body.
Fig. 22. -Ramified nerve-cell from anterior cornu of spinal
cord of man. (From Gerlach.)
a, axis-cylinder process, b, clump of pigment granules. Above the cell is seen part
of the network of fibrils mentioned in the text.
On the Mechanisms of Cerebrospinal Lymph Excretion.
The cerebro-spinal lymph, when formed, passes into the
cerebro-spinal intra-spaces and inter-spaces along the peri-
vascular and peri-neural spaces or canals, and thus conveyed,
fills or occupies the ventricles of the brain, the central canal
of the cord, and the sub-arachnoid and sub-dural spaces ;
and being a locally fluctuating and varying quantity, we
9o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
must look to this circumstance for a means of obviating
the dangers arising to the functional powers of the impor-
tant structures composing the nervous system. Therefore,
notwithstanding that we have been taught to consider the
cerebrospinal cavity a " shut sac" we have satisfied our-
selves it is not so, because we have discovered in a
continuation of our enquiry into the subject of cerebro-
spinal lymph circulation^ so far as it is applicable to the
elucidation of the problem, and in so far as it is required
to complete our survey of the nervine circulation, that it
is, on the contrary, abundantly perforated and physiologically
pervious and porous.
Moreover, in pursuing these enquiries, we have asked
ourselves again and again, is it possible after all that the
cerebro-spinal cavity is a " shut sac " ? and have answered
ourselves by asking, is it possible after all that the most
important organs in the body are suspended in, and inter-
penetrated by, a fluid largely composed of their own
debris and noxiously impregnated with the toxins resulting
from the exercise of their own structures and functions and
for which there are no possible outlets available ? To
the latter questions we have, therefore, felt constrained
to return a negative answer, and, in justification of our
unbelief we venture to suggest the following alternative
views :
It was once said that " Nature abhors a vacuum," the
saying being elicited from its author under pressure. We
would now say, in all spontaneity, that nature also abhors a
stasis and toxicity, and delights in the perpetual movement of
matter, whether in large or small masses, or whether in
molecular, or stellar, manner and proportions, and in an
atoxic condition.
Applying these aphorisms to our consideration of the
problem of the disposal of the cerebro-spinal fluid, they
enable us to satisfy ourselves that here we are dealing with
no exception to the rule of perpetual movement, or circu-
lation, in matter, and that we have only to follow it up to
find that nature does not interpose blank walls against
which that fluid may contend in hopeless imprisonment,
but, on the contrary, that she provides a loopholed, yet
carefully guarded circulatory receptacle into which it can
CIRCULATION IN ITS NERVINE BEARINGS 91
run, or trickle, and out of which it can gravitate spon-
taneously, or be liberated, by ordered function and
mechanism, in non-autotoxic manner and safe degree.
We grant that the cerebro-spinal cavity is occasionally a
"shut sac" but the occasion is only when the quantity of
fluid within it coincides with its available space, or when a
pathological condition arises in which the natural outlets
Fig. 23.— Small branch of a muscular nerve of the frog, near
its termination, showing divisions of the fibres. Magnified
350 diameters- (Kolliker.)
a, into two ; b, into three.
are closed. From this it will be perceived that circulation
here is essentially necessary to meet nature's wants in the
performance of healthy function and the obviation of
disease.
To make plain the nature of this circulation, we shall
first consider in some detail the nature of the mechanisms
by which it is accomplished, and, in doing so, it may be well
to refer shortly to the condition and relations of some of
the parts concerned in its embryonic state.
92 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
At the stage of embryonic development, when the neuro-
enteric canal has just been formed, we may infer that its
structural continuity warrants the assumption that there is
also functional continuity, and that there are, therefore,
common inlets and common outlets to and from the
common canal. That being so, we are warranted further
in inferring that with the developmental differentiation
which afterwards takes place at the posterior inferior aspect
of the canal, the common structural and functional attri-
butes are, to some extent, maintained, or, at least, that the
separation of the canal into two parts is not structurally
absolute, and therefore that there still continues a sympathy
between the two and a physical union sufficient to maintain
a modified circulation : in fact, just such a connection as can
keep open a channel, or channels, of escape for the super-
abundant fluid contents of the cerebro-spinal cavity at its
posterior extremity. In the process of developmental
separation of the neurenteric canal into two divisions and
their reunion anteriorly, the differentiating and uniting or
metamorphic structures laid down between them are left
perforated and patent — patent, that is to say, on the prin-
ciple of the safety-valve.
These perforated areas, or sections, of the cerebro-spinal,
meningeal, and ventral structures must, therefore, be
looked for where the neural and ventral canals were origi-
nally united, and where they were likewise originally
separated, and there we find them — anteriorly in the nasal
fossae, the pharynx, and the hypophysial mechanism, with
its connected glosso-pharyngeal excretory structures, the
tonsils, lateral and pharyngeal, the uvula, and the tongue ;
and posteriorly in the peri- and endo-anal textures.
Besides these three special outlets, we must here express
it as our deliberate opinion that every nerve, cephalic and
spinal, which leaves the cerebro-spinal cavity — and of course
they all do — takes with it at least two surrounding open
spaces, the continuations of the sub-arachnoid and sub-dural
spaces (Fig. 24), which afford an additional and, in fact,
continuous chain of openings by which, as occasion requires,
the cerebro-spinal fluid can be run off We wish it, thus,
to be understood that we believe in the continuity of the
cerebro-spinal meninges and the inner layers of the neuri-
CIRCULATION IN ITS NERVINE BEARINGS 93
lemmae. In other words, that the meningeal coverings of
the various nerves are not reflected back into the cerebro-
spinal cavity, but that they continue or progress with their
dividing interspaces to the ultimate extremities of each
terminal fibre, both sensory, motor, and sympathetic
1
d Jm
! 'A
••- >;
Fig. 24.— Section through the place of exit of a spinal nerve-
root through the dura mater. (Key and Retzius.)
«, bundles of the nerve-root becoming collected into a single bundle as they emerge ;
b, dura mater ; c, arachnoid ; d, a reticular lamella of the arachnoid reflected
along the nerve-root ; s, subdural space ; s', /, subarachnoid space.
«« nerui communicantes" and that they end with the nerve
endings. Thus we find, as we strongly suspected we would,
that a great series of excretory tubes with safety-valve
outlets have been introduced into the mechanism of this
cerebro-spinal " shut sac," subserving, no doubt, impor-
tant, yea, absolutely essential functions, in the regulation of
intra-cranial and intra-spinal pressure and the provision of
excretory facilities.
EXTRACT VIII. a.
ON THE ORGANS OF NEURAL EXCRETION.
The Pituitary and Pineal Glands in their Relationship with
Cerebro-Spinal Lymph Circulation and Excretion.
In this connection it appears possible and proper to assign
functions of great eliminative, or excretory, importance to
the curious and much debated structures known as the
pituitary (Fig. 29) and pineal glands. Thus the pituitary
gland, situated in the sella tursica, and surrounded by an
extension of the venous circulation of the brain called
the circular sinus, consisting of a series of blood spaces or
" back-water pools," so to speak, into which we think the
more fluid and less effete contents of the contained
glandular organ can well and filter, and be carried away in
the blood streams issuing therefrom.
The pituitary body is suspended from the infundi-
bulum, into which the third ventricle may be said to
drain through a narrow " pit " situated in a hollow in its
floor, the less fluid as well as the more solid residual
matter of the ventricular cavity, that matter being guided
hither by the ciliary activity of its endothelium and the
passive influence of gravitation. Situated thus it, the
pituitary body, must become the receptacle of a mixture
of materials, consisting of cerebro-spinal lymph, endo-
thelial cell debris, neuroglial oozings, and whatever else
obtains an entrance into it, which it must of anatomical
necessity dispose of, and this, we claim, must be its func-
tion ; and surely no mean function, yea, a function second
to none in the whole category of glandular functions in
ORGANS OF NEURAL EXCRETION
95
its direct bearings on the great problem of life and health.
In disposing of this great mass of excretory material, its
anciently believed, but now denied glandular texture and
character must simply be " what is required " to enable it
to deal effectually with it. Hence, we may be prepared to
find that the serous or fluid part of it can effect an easy
exit through its wall into the surrounding blood channels,
leaving the residual or true pituitary portion to be dealt
with by its proper gland textures.
Fig. 25.— Transverse vertical section of the nasal fossae seen
from behind. (Arnold.) %.
1, part of the frontal bone; 2, crista galli ; 3, perpendicular plate of the ethmoid;
between 4 and 4, the ethmoidal cells ; 5, right middle spongy bone ; 6, left lower
spongy bone ; 7, vomer ; 8, malar bone ; 9, maxillary sinus ; 10, its opening into
the middle meatus.
This process of excretion may, therefore, be regarded
as a sifting and cleansing process, and the central part of
the scavenging economy of the cerebrospinal lymph highways
and byeways. We feel constrained likewise to claim for
the pineal gland that it has been properly named by the
early exponents of anatomical learning, and that its later
nondescript character has been wrongly assigned to it, and
we claim further that it plays a part in the excretory work
of the third or central ventricle.
The pineal gland occupies anatomically a very different
position from that of the pituitary, viz. the roof, instead
of the floor of the ventricular cavity, and so of necessity
96 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
it must act in a much more intermittent manner, the one
(the pineal) only acting when the ventricular space is full
and " running over," so to speak, while the other (the
pituitary) must always be more or less active. Hence we
may assume that it disposes of only the more fluid con-
tents of the overflowing space, the more solid gravitating
and being swept away into the more dependent gland,
and, consequently, we may be prepared to find that any
solid materials found in it will represent the crystalline or
Fig. 26.— Nerves of the outer wall of the nasal fossae. (From
Sappey, after Hirschfeld and Leveille\) f.
1, network of the branches of the olfactory nerve, descending upon the region of the
superior and middle turbinated bones ; 2, external twig of the ethmoidal branch
of the nasal nerve ; 3, sphenopalatine ganglion ; 4, ramification of the anterior
Ealatine nerves ; 5, posterior, and 6, middle divisions of the palatine nerves ; 7,
ranch to the region of the inferior turbinated bone ; 8, branch to the region of
the superior and middle turbinated bones ; 9, naso-palatine branch to the septum
cut short.
earthy matter held in solution or suspension by the
comparatively clean supernatant fluid passing through it,
and this is really what we find, the substances usually
observed being crystals or accretions of carbonate of lime
and phosphate of magnesia, in, or around, a matrix, or
nucleus, of organic material.
It is, therefore, obvious that the conclusions come to
by the earliest observers regarding the structural charac-
teristics of these bodies are really true, in the sense
that their structures are true glands, and, consequently,
ORGANS OF NEURAL EXCRETION 97
that we are warranted in claiming that their true functions
are not really cerebral, or nervine, but, as their title implies,
secretory, or excretory, or what may be called vehicular.
These views seem to us to open wide fields of investi-
gation and research for the physiologist, pathologist, and
clinician of a most promising character, the following up
of which we think is bound to repay, both in additions to
our exact and scientific knowledge, and our practical
resources.
Moreover, the embryological study of the nervous
system affords the means, not only of tracing the evolution
of its component parts, but of perceiving the hidden
meaning of the existence of these textures known as the
pituitary and pineal glands, which are now regarded as
Fig. 27.— Nerve-fibres from the olfactory mucous membrane.
(Max Schultze.) Magnified between 400 and 500 diameters.
From a branch of the olfactory nerve of the sheep ; at a, a, two dark bordered or
medullated fibres, from the fifth pair, associated with the pale olfactory fibres.
the anatomical a survivals " of once important organs in
the everyday active life of some of our remote ancestors,
or progenitors. This latter view, however originated and
sanctioned, may be highly convenient as a means of saving
further trouble, and of satisfying the amour propre of some
enquirers after truth, but is highly objectionable, inas-
much as it shelves the needed investigation of the problems
involved and deprives mankind of the practical benefits
to be derived therefrom. Survivals forsooth ! 'Tis nothing
less than an insult to nature, and an impeachment of her
working and administration of the law of " evolution," to
manufacture and propagate this story of her prodigality
in the use of most valuable cephalic, or brain, space as a
museum for the storage of obsolete organisms, and her
persistent exhibition of a juvenile affection for the display
of some of the works of her "prentice" hand in this, the
G
98 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
gallery of her latest, best, and finest productions ! These
structures, called pituitary and pineal glands respectively,
are illustrations of the truth of this exclamation and con-
tention, and, it seems to us, that their more exhaustive
study will reveal many facts indicating that they are
structures of the greatest functional importance in the
regulation of the cerebro-spinal lymph circulation, a circu-
lation of equal importance with the great blood circulation,
and a circulation, in fact, emanating from the blood
circulation, and the last of the great series of circulations
Fig. 28. — Nerves of the septum nasi, seen from the right side.
(From Sappey, after Hirschfeld and Leveille.) §.
I, the olfactory bulb ; 1, the olfactory nerves passing through the foramina of the
cribriform plate, and descending to be distributed on the septum ; 2, the internal
or septal twig of the nasal branch of the ophthalmic nerve ; 3, naso-palatine
involved in the chain of vital processes called by the names
deglutition, digestion, absorption, circulation proper, nu-
trition, assimilation, secretion, and excretion. Thus, in
the earliest stages of embryonic development and the
evolution of the nervous system, we observe facilities
produced and maintained for the free circulation of intra-
and extra-nervine fluids: we perceive, also, that the func-
tional role of these fluids is twofold, namely, to be a means
whereby the results of nerve structure waste are floated
out of the intra- and. extra-nervine spaces, and the enclosed
structures kept "sweet and clean," in order that their
vitally important functions may be performed free from
friction and auto-interference, in order that the mental
ORGANS OF NEURAL EXCRETION 99
and physical output, so to speak, may reach its highest
level of production, as well as to afford a means of
mechanical support, protection, and inhibition to the
whole component parts of the systemic nervous system.
Fig. 29.— Right half of the encephalic peduncle and cerebellum
as seen froxM thk inside of a median section. (Allen Thomson
after Reichert. )
II, right optic nerve ; behind it the optic commissure divided ; III, right third nerve;
VI, sixth nerve; V3, third ventricle; Th, back part of the thalamus opticus ;
H, section of the pituitary body ; />, pineal gland ; below its stalk is the posterior
commissure ; c a, anterior commissure divided, and behind it the divided anterior
pillar of the fornix ; / c, lamina cinerea ; i, infundibulum (cavity) ; t c, tuber
cinereum ; behind it the corpus albicans ; f, mark of the anterior pillar of the
fornix descending in the wall of the third ventricle : c Mr, commissura mollis ;
s p, stria pinealis or peduncle of pineal gland; Q, lamina quadrigemina ; as,
aqueduct of Sylvius near the fourth ventricle ; cr, crus cerebri ; P V, pons
Varolii ; 71/, medulla oblongata ; and behind these the cerebellum.
In what may be called the "vesicular" stage of develop-
ment of the central nervous system, we find that its
more solid nerve elements or neurons group or arrange
themselves in tubular fashion around a central cavity,
which is afterwards to be known as the cerebro-spinal
ventricular spaces and central canal respectively, in the
lumina of which is secreted by the choroid plexuses the
IOO
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
cerebro-spinal fluid. This fluid, as are all fluids within
an organised body, is not allowed to flow at large, but
is confined within well-defined limits, secured here by
the growth of certain containing membranes, which ulti-
mately become the meninges of the brain and spinal
cord, and the neurilemmar coverings of the nerves
respectively.
The growth of these containing membranes, and the
circulation and retention of their contained fluid, necessi-
Fig. 30.— Vertical section of the head in early embryoes of the
rabbit. Magnified. (From Mihalkovics.)
A. From an embryo of five millimetres long.
B. From an embryo of six millimetres long.
In A, the faucial opening is still closed ; in B, it is formed ; c, anterior cerebral
vesicle ; me, meso-cerebrum ; mo, medulla oblongata ; m, medullary layer ; if,
infundibulum ; am, amnion ; spe, spheno-ethmoidal, be, central (dorsum sellae),
and spo , spheno-occipital parts of the basis cranii ; h, heart ; f anterior extremity
of primitive alimentary canal and opening (later) of the fauces ; r, cephalic portion
of primitive intestine ; eh, notochord ; py, buccal and pituitary involution.
tates the provision of a series of excretory mechanisms,
or organisms, whereby its quantity can be maintained
in "balanced ratio," and the ceaselessly recurring dis-
turbances and vicissitudes of the central nervous system
neutralised. Here, then, in this connection, we may see
in the very early appearance of the pituitary and pineal
mechanisms, or organisms, examples of that provision, as
well as a vindication of the views of the earliest anatomists
regarding their truly glandular structure. The embryonic
evolution of the pituitary gland (Figs. 28, 30, 32) in
structure and function is marvellously completed and
ORGANS OF NEURAL EXCRETION 101
maintained in post-natal growth and life, and the role
of that body, in its association with the production of
Fig. 31.— Side view of the head of an embryo-chick of the third
day. (From Balfour.)
CH, cerebral hemispheres ; FB, thalamencephalon ; MB, midbrain ; Cb, cerebellum ;
HB, medulla oblongatae ; N, nasal pit ; ot, auditory vesicle not yet closed
externally ; op, optic vesicle, with /, the lens, and chf, the choroidal fissure (in
mesoblast) ; iF, the first visceral fold or plate, the superior maxillary fold slightly
indicated above it ; 2, 3, 4F, the second, third and fourth visceral plates with
the visceral clefts between them.
certain diseased conditions, becomes highly suggestive
when we continue to enquire more deeply into its bear-
Fig. 32. — Vertical section of the infundibulum and pituitary
diverticulum in the rabbit's embryo, after the opening of
the fauces. (From Mihalkovics.)
For the earlier stages see Fig. 30, p. 100, A and B. be, dorsum sellae ; if, infundi-
bulum ; tha, floor ot thalamencephalon ', py, pituitary diverticulum, now closed ;
p' stalk of original communication with the mouth; ph, pharynx ; eh, notochord
in the spheno-occipital part of the cranial basis.
ings. The earliest stage at which the human embryo
shows that evolution of the pituitary gland has begun
is when a superior and posterior diverticulation of the
102
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
buccal cavity takes place, and when a downward pitting
and eversion of the floor of the middle cerebral vesicle
shows itself ; this stage is followed by the extension
and approach towards each other of these diverticulations
or expansions, and by their final enclosure in a common
cyst wall, within which they afterwards maintain a separate
anatomical and histological existence, but co-operate in the
performance of a common
_^ff>Vx function — their textures,
the anterior and posterior
lobes respectively, being in-
dividually discernible, while
their functional work may
be regarded as common.
The sella tursica, or cen-
tral basi-sphenoid floor,
moreover, is the earliest
consolidated and ossified
texture of the human skull,
and, as such, maybe regarded
as of primary importance in
the support and accommo-
dation of the growing, as
well as the mature central
nervous system, so far at
least as concerns the brain
with its dependent pituitary
outlet. In association with
the formation of this solid
floor, as a foundation on
which the central great
nerve organisms comprised
within the cranial vault can be laid down, developed, or
built up in due order, we find that a series of at least
three, foramina, or openings, one central and two lateral,
is provided whereby the residual materials, resulting from
the progress of the great developmental processes then
being wrought out, can be removed, to prevent the
occurrence of encumbrances and contaminations.
These foraminal exits (Figs. 33, 34, 35, 36) coincide in
number and position with the subjacent spongy, and, in
Fig. 33. — Brain and spinal chord of
a foetus of four months, seen
from behind. (From Kolliker.)
h, hemispheres of the cerebrum ; m, corpora
quadrigemina or mesencephalon ; c, cere-
bellum ; mo, medulla oblongata, the fourth
ventricle being overlapped by the cerebellum ;
s s, the spinal cord with its brachial and
crural enlargements.
ORGANS OF NEURAL EXCRETION 103
our opinion, excretory bodies known as the tonsils and
uvula respectively, hence the frequency with which ail-
Fig. 34.— Sagittal section of the pituitary body and infundi-
bulum with the adjoining part of the 3rd ventricle.
(Schwalbe. )
a, anterior lobe; a', a projection from it towards the front of the infundibulum, i\
b, posterior lobe connected by a solid stalk with the infundibulum ; Lc, lamina
cinerea ; o, right optic nerve ; ch, section of chiasma ; r.o.. recess of the ventricle
above the chiasma ; cm., corpus mammillare.
ments, involving the basal aspect of the cranial contents,
synchronise with those attacking the throat textures, and
the grounds for inferring that this is due to structural as
Fig. 35. — View from below of the cartilaginous base of the
cranium with its ossif1c centres in a human foetus of about
four months. (From Huxley, slightly altered.)
The bone is dotted to distinguish it from the cartilage, which is shaded with lines.
1, the basilar part ; 2, tbe condyloid or lateral parts ; and 3, 4, the tabular or
superior part of the occipital surrounding the foramen magnum ; 5, centres of the
presphenoid on the inside of the optic foramen ; 6, centres of the post-sphenoid ;
7, centres of the lesser wings or orbito-sphenoid ; 8, septal cartilage of the nose ;
9 and 10, parts of the labyrinth.
well as functional continuity and inter-dependence. There-
fore, a meaning is thus given to the hitherto apparently
accidental coincidence of head and throat, as well as face
affections, and a key supplied whereby the most effective
104
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
treatment may be applied to them, on somewhat definite
and scientific lines, instead of on the rather empirical and
haphazard principles which have hitherto been relied
upon in the absence of definite anatomical and physiological
bases; for instance, we may perceive common, or kindred,
causes at work along definite lines, anatomical and
histological, in the production of a common cold, a coryza,
or an influenza, the running at the eyes and nose, the
headache, the nasal and pharyngeal catarrh, with the early
associated local and general symptoms, following each
Fig. 36.— The lower or cartilaginous part of the cranium of a
chick OF the sixth DAY. (From Huxley.)
1, 1, chorda dorsalis ; 2, the shaded portion here and forwards is the cartilage of the
base of the skull ; at 2, the occipital part ; at 3, the prolongations of cartilage into
the anterior part of the skull called trabecule cranii ; 4, the pituitary space ;
5, parts of the labyrinth.
other, or occurring simultaneously, according to which part
of the involved mucosa, Schneiderian, or pharyngeal, is
first invaded by the materies morbi^ thus pointing the way
to secure the amelioration, or cure, of these oft-recurring
and sometimes dangerous affections. A common cold is, ot
course, most frequently due to mere mechanical disturbance
of the process of the distribution, or circulation, of the
cerebro-spinal fluid, and disappears spontaneously and
without the necessity for medical intervention by the
unassisted operation of the regulative influences inherent
in, and the automatic health-preserving forces possessed
by, all living organisms.
EXTRACT VIII. b.
ON THE POSTERIOR OR COCCYGEAL GLANDULATURE
AND EXIT FROM THE CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH
CAVITY.
The third great outlet from the cerebro-spinal cavity
referred to, viz. the posterior, or peri-anal, and most probably
recto-anal as well, can be traced from an early stage of
the development of the embryo as the neurenteric canal,
which at a subsequent state of development becomes
separated into two distinct canals which in time become
respectively the cerebro-spinal and intestinal canals.
In the inter-space formed by the process of separation
of these two canals the body called the coccygeal gland or
glomerulus is evolved or developed from the metamorphic
structures, and continues to secure and maintain a
connection between the separated cavities, by virtue of its
union with what may be described as other metamorphic
remains or transition structures.
In our opinion the posterior outlet from the cerebro-
spinal cavity contended for is secured in the following
way and by the following means, viz. : In the matrix of
the texture of the dividing material, or wall of division,
are laid down, or rather more exactly, left, the following
structures which seem to represent, not survivals only, but
an organised system of vessels and organs whose office is
one of excretion from the posterior end of the cerebro-
spinal cavity, and whose continuity and integrity are
therefore of great importance, not only in regulating
intra-spinal pressure, but in providing a means by their
functional attributes of maintaining the moisture and
106 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
consequent flexibility of the recto-anal and peri-anal tex-
tures, while acting as excretory organisms. The first of
these structures is the "filum terminate" (Figs. 37, 38), a
structure which is usually regarded as merely ligamentous,
but which, to us, represents the continuation of the thecal
investments of the spinal cord, and which, if not hollow, is
Fig. 37. — Plan of the skull, etc., of the embryo pig, seen from
below. Magnified ten diameters. (From Parker.)
tr, cartilage of the trabecular ; ctr, cornua trabecularum ; /;/, prenasal cartilage ;
ppg, pterygo-palatine cartilage ; mn, the mandibular arch with Meckel's cartilage ;
au, the auditory vesicle ; hy, the cerato-hyoid arch ; thh, the thyro-hyoid ; py,
the pituitary fossa ; ch, the notochord in the cranial basis, surrounded by the
parachordals (iv) ; vn, facial nerve ; ix, glosso-pharyngeal ; x, pneumogastric ;
xii, hypoglossal nerve.
porous, and therefore still able by capillary circulation and
gravitation, to transmit fluid sufficient to accomplish the
objects hinted at above ; this structure, we think, will
find its natural termination in the coccygeal gland or
glomerulus, which will receive its contents and functionate
accordingly, but not as a mere ligamentous attachment to
the coccyx as ordinarily taught ; or, in other words, the
filum terminate will " excrete " or distil its contents into
the coccygeal gland or into what seems to be a ductless
ON THE POSTERIOR GLANDULATURE 107
secretory glandular organism ; but the gland (coccygeal) is
not necessarily closed, and we are satisfied that on close
scrutiny it will uniformly be found to empty itself by
means of a series of what are anatomically called "modified
Fig. 38.— Posterior view of the medulla oblongata and of the
spinal cord with its coverings and the roots of the nerves.
(Sappey.) |.
The theca or dura-matral sheath has been opened by a median incision along the
whole length, and is stretched out to each side. On the left side, in the upper
and middle parts (A and B), the posterior roots of the nerves have been removed
so as to expose the ligamentum denticulatum, 9, and the anterior roots, 13 ; and
along the right side the posterior roots, 10, are shown arising from the postero-
lateral groove, and passing out through the dura mater. The roman numbers
indicate the different nerves in the cervical, dorsal, lumbar, and sacral regions
respectively; 11, posterior median fissure; 12, ganglia on the posterior roots;
14, the united nerve beyond the ganglion ; 15, tapering lower end of the spinal
cord ; 16, filum terminate; 17, Cauda equina.
sweat glands," as described by some anatomists, on the
margin of the anus, and we think by a series of lymph
exits into the interior of the anal ending of the rectum.
The coccygeal glomerulus, or gland, may thus be regarded
to some extent as bearing a resemblance in structure and
io8
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Dxn
LC'
SH
function to the Batrachian "lymph hearts," and from its
being traversed by muscular fibres and supplied with
ganglionic nerve cells, therefore possessed of the power of
emptying itself, or, in other words, it possesses the power of
acting as a " bladder " for the caudal
extremity of the cerebro-spinal
cavity.
The pathological and clinical
aspects of these views will, we
think, be seen to have most impor-
tant bearings on both the scientific
and practical application of medical
and surgical principles and practice.
In still further pursuing our
enquiries into the role of the
cerebro-spinal circulation, we would
allude in more detail to the more
purely nervine aspect of the subject,
and its associations on the basis of
continuity with the cerebro-spinal
part or aspect of the subject.
Anatomically the brain, spinal
cord, and nervous system proper
are suspended, so to speak, within
a fluid medium or covering con-
tinuous from the cerebro-spinal
cavity to the ultimate termination
Dxii
>l*v
Si
h
Fig. 39.— Posterior view of the lower end
of the spinal cord with the cauda equina
and sheath. (Allen Thomson.) £.
The sheath has been opened from behind and stretched
towards the sides ; on the left side all the roots of the
nerves are entire ; on the right side both roots of the
first and second lumbar nerves are entire, while the rest
have been divided close to the place of their passage
through the sheath. The bones of the coccyx are
sketched in their natural relative position to show the
place of the filum terminale and the lowest nerves.^
a, placed on the posterior median fissure at the middle
of the lumbar enlargement of the cord ; b, b, the ter-
minal filament, drawn slightly aside by a hook at its
middle, and descending within the dura-matral sheath ;
b', b', its prolongation beyond the sheath and upon the
back of the coccygeal bones ; c, the dura-matral sheath ;
d, double foramina in this for the separate passage of
the anterior and posterior roots of each of the nerves ;
e, ligamentum denticulatum ; Dx, and Dxn, the tenth
and twelfth dorsal nerves; Li, and Lv, the first and
fifth lumbar nerves ; Si, and Sv, the first and fifth sacral
nerves ; Ci, the coccygeal nerve.
ON THE POSTERIOR GLANDULATURE 109
of each individual nerve fibril. The physical necessity for
this provision at once becomes apparent when we consider
the delicate nature of the structures enclosed, compre-
hending, as they do, the insulated producers, storers and
conductors of nerve force, and the machinery of intelligence,
motion, and will structures, therefore indicating the vital
importance of preventing the injurious influence and con-
sequences of external disturbances reaching them.
Histologically the continuity of the structures within
which the cerebro-spinal fluid is enclosed can be traced
from the cranial cavity, the bony wall of which is lined
by a series of membranes, each of which accompanies the
spinal cord into the spinal canal (or cavity), and thereafter
spreads itself around or ensheaths every nerve trunk as it
leaves that canal (or cavity), thereafter still travelling with
it until it finally loses itself in the terminal extremities
of the peripheral nerve fibrils, sensory and motor. These
coverings (or sheaths) being thus omnipresent throughout
the whole nervous system, it follows that the fluid enclosed
within them must also be continuous with its environ-
ments and likewise omnipresent, and therefore that it can,
and must, exercise the mechanical offices of buffer and
protector throughout its whole extent.
We therefore again express our disbelief in the doctrine
of the " shut sac," as applied to the lining of the
■cerebro-spinal cavity, and reaffirm our conviction of " the
truth " of what we have attempted to make clear,
summing up our contentions in the expression once more
of our belief: circulatio circulationum omnia circulatio.
Thus we see that the neural lymph circulation, while it
belongs to a different order from the haemal lymph
circulation, may still be described as a part of the great
lymph circulation. It is carried on centrally through the
ventricles and central canal, the sub-arachnoid and sub-dural
spaces, and peripherally mainly along or between the
encircling neural coats — epi, peri, and endo — beginning in
the cerebro-spinal cavity and terminating respectively in the
skin, the muscles, and the sympathetic nerves — the first
through the sensory nerve terminals, and the second through
the motor, the latter becoming ultimately directly united
with the great sympathetic or haemal lymph circulation.
EXTRACT VIII. c.
ON THE CIRCULATION AND EXCRETION OF THE
CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID.
Again the cerebrospinal fluid, being that fluid which
surrounds and interpenetrates the whole systemic nervous
system, separating the layers of its encircling membranes
or meninges and neurilemmae, thereby preventing friction
and concussion amongst its component parts and floating
them, so to speak, within a fluid medium which, during
neuro-muscular activity, secures their individual freedom
and liberty of action, and the certainty and precision of
their united employment.
In the condition of bodily rest the extent of its
movements or circulation is reduced to a minimum ; in
the condition of bodily activity, however, the extent and
range of these movements must be great, according to the
violence and duration of that activity ; but under the
combined influences of bodily activity and mental excite-
ment a pitch of cyclonic, or tornado, violence of movement
may be reached to which there is scarcely a limit. This
therefore necessitates the provision of a system of circula-
tory vessels equal to the strain, whose function will be
primarily that of circulation, and secondarily that of
protecting the central and enclosed nervous system in all
its parts from the effects of that violence.
" Excretion " from the cerebro-spinal cavity of the
effete materials collected hither from the neuroglial and
nerve structures, consisting of nerve debris or " brain
sweat," and the "thousands upon thousands" of outcast
atoms from cell and tube and fibre which constitute the
THE CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID in
daily currency of brain and nerve exchange, is of the
greatest importance to health, and although the subject, as
localised here, has to some extent been referred to, we
think it has not yet been exhausted, and therefore that it
is calling for further discussion.
Physiologically the necessity for a solution of the many
problems hinging on this most important, but com-
paratively little known subject, becomes more and more
clamant as the morphological and clinical facts, the
bacteriological data, and the generalisations deducible from
them accumulate, and because the practical bearings ot
that solution on the clinical work of the physician and
surgeon, both diagnostic, therapeutical, and prophylactic,
must be estimated as of the first importance ; besides, it
opens up avenues of possible progress for the sanitarian,
and aids ill clearing "the field of vision" of the exponents
of preventive medicine.
In continuation of the discussion, we would reiterate
that the role of the cerebro-spinal fluid seems to us to be
to a large extent excretory, and that one of the main
functions of the channels, already described as pervading
the entire nervous system, would seem to us to be to
afford a means of direct exit for the effete and worn-
out material resulting from the disintegration of nerve
structure due to tear and wear.
The circulation of the blood generally, through the
capillaries of the vascular system proper, affords the means
by which nutritive materials are conveyed to where they
are required, and whereby osmosis or molecular circula-
tion, into the tissue matrix and enclosed tissue spaces,
through the walls of these vessels they finally reach, by
physiological selection, the various textures and organs
composing the body, and become appropriated and in-
corporated by them. This process (the nutritive) having
been accomplished, and a variable period of textural
incorporation enjoyed by these materials, what remains
of their intra-corporeal journeyings and wanderings is
resumed. In other words, after their brief period of
incorporation and settled (?) tenancy of the bodily fabric,
and their brief span of communal existence is, so to speak,
ended, when in turn they become worn by atomic, or
ii2 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
molecular, circulation, and disintegrated by use, their
journey into the blood stream is accomplished through
the lymph spaces, channels, and vessels : and here comes
into view a great and hitherto unanswered question, a
question underlying all theories of nutrition and excretion
— the question of whether these effete and outgoing
materials become mixed with the incoming and nutritive
materials, and whether a serious seeming error in the
*' plans of nature" has not been perpetrated. In framing
an answer to this question as to the possible contact and
admixture of effete, and outgoing, with nutritive, and
incoming, materials, within the most vitally important
structures of the body, we would regard it as almost a
necessary duty to invite the attention of those interested
in such problems to the matter, as of greater importance
than anything that meantime we could advance at this
stage of our enquiry.
Here, nevertheless, we would in a qualified and tentative
way conclude that the removal of the effete materials from
the nervous system, as distinguished from the rest of the system,
is effected by the peri-, epi-, and endo-neural channels, and
that therefore the nervine excretory mechanism is almost,
though not quite (the exception being musculo-nervine or
neuro-muscular), isolated. In other words, and to make
the various steps of the problems involved clearer and
more comprehensible, we would recapitulate shortly what
we have already advanced, thus — the blood circulation
carries directly to nearly every structure of the body what
nourishment it requires, the great exception being the
brain and systemic nervous system, where the blood
circulation, instead of delivering the nutritive materials
directly to the neuronal structures, lays them down and
stores them, so to speak, in the stroma of the neuroglia,
where they are taken up as required by the gemmules and
dendrons of the nerve cells, and conveyed to the various
intra-cellular structures and distally attached nerve fibrils
or axons, where, after forming for a time constituent parts
of the nervous structures mentioned, they move on to
the terminal extremities of these axons, and are detached
there as epidermis or as sarcous substance, the latter
joining the haemal lymph and returning into the blood.
THE CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID 113
Continuing, we would recall that the processes of
cerebro-spinal circulation and excretion are accomplished
through the complicated series of spaces, inter-spaces,
channels, and terminal outfalls found in, and surrounding,
the entire nervous system, comprising brain, spinal cord,
and nerves, systemic and sympathetic, by the agency of
capillary force, mechanical displacement, gravitation, not to
mention the occult operation of what might be called vital
hydraulics and hydro-dynamics.
The vessels, as we may call them, through which all this
cerebro-spinal fluid passes, consist of the meninges with
~€$vp!
Fig. 40.— A, Two tactile cells in the deeper part of the human
epidermis. (Merkel.) B, Ending of nerves in tactile discs in
the pig's snout. (Ranvier.)
n, nerve-fibre ; m, terminal menisci or tactile disks ; e, ordinary epithelium-cell ;
a, altered epithelium-cell, to which the meniscus is applied.
their inter-spaces, the peri-neural extensions of these
meninges with the neurilemmar inter-spaces surrounding
the nerve fibres, fibrils, and terminal arborisations.
True, a good deal of what has been advanced here and
elsewhere in this diary requires more complete anatomical
decipherment and exact histological proof before its accep-
tance can be absolutely claimed, but also true, we, so far as
our own observation enabled us, and so far as we could
procure materials from other sources published, and other-
wise to assist us, we have confined ourselves in pronouncing
our disbeliefs in accepted doctrines and in formulating our
own views respecting many of them, to the use of strict
methods of induction.
ii4
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Connected with the economy of nervine excretion we
ought, perhaps, to have shortly related or recalled how and
by what means it is intrinsically accomplished.
The various openings, or rather series of openings, by
which the effete materials floated into the great body of
the cerebro-spinal fluid find an exit may be named as
follows : — the nasal, the pituitary, the coccygeal, the
cutaneous, and the muscular, and, connected with the
latter, the general lymphatic.
Fig. 41.— Superficial muscles of the perineum in the male.
(Modified from Bourgery.) (A.T.) \.
a, spine of the pubis ; b, coccyx : c, placed on the tuberosity of the ischium, points by
a line to the great sacro-sciatic ligament; X, anus; 1, placed on the corpus
spongiosum urethrae in front of the bulbo-cavernosi muscles ; 2, central point of
the perineum ; 3, ischio-cavernosus ; 4, transversus perinei ; 5, levator ani ; from
2 to b, external sphincter of the anus ; surrounding X , is the internal sphincter ;
6, coccygeus : 7, adductor longus ; 8, gracilis ; 9, adductor magnus ; 10, semi-
tendinosus and biceps ; n, on the left side, the gluteus maximus entire ; 11', the
same cut on the right side, so as to expose a part of the coccygeus muscle.
The first and second, or combined naso-pharyngeal, is
afforded through the naso-pharyngeal mucosa, along the
olfactory apparatus and associated terminal textures, with
the uvula and tonsillo-lingual mucosa. The second
(Figs. 39, 41), or coccygeal, is obtained through the filum
terminale of the spinal cord, the coccygeal gland, and the
peri-anal " modified sweat glands " and endo-anal lymph
exits. These two outlets being situated at the anterior
and posterior, or upper and lower, ends of the cerebro-
THE CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID 115
spinal cavity respectively, may be looked upon as the main
drains and residual excretory channels from the two great
structures, the brain and spinal cord.
The third, or cutaneous, may be regarded as affording
a great peripheral drainage system to the whole of the
sensory nerves, as a safety valve for the escape of super-
abundant cerebro-spinal fluid when the two first are
impeded from any cause and unavailable, hence the impor-
tance of recognising their relationship with each other, or
interdependence, as one of reciprocity.
The fourth, the muscular, with the attached general
lymphatic system, acts as a drainage system to the motor
side of the cephalic, cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and sacro-
coccygeal nerves, as to their anterior roots, and hence
drains into the substance of the various muscular struc-
tures to which they are distributed, i.e. to the whole
voluntary muscles of the body. The union of the nervous
and muscular systems being one of the greatest intimacy,
in fact, of continuity, the drainage from the whole motor
area of the systemic nervous system is ejected, or rather
injected, into the sarcolemmar and sarcous elements of the
muscular textures, to be taken up by the systemic lymph
circulation, or driven by continuity from texture to texture
until they become finally eliminated from the system, or
become pathological entities, or " materies morbi " amid
the structures in which they may be finally retained.
It will thus, we think, be seen that the maintenance of
the patency and integrity of these various drainage systems
becomes a physiological work of the greatest importance in
its application to the individual, and a hygienic task, to
help which is not to be despised by the practices of the
healing art, the fourth, or muscular, calling for even special
attention. A subsidiary system of this drainage, we think,
may also be found into and along the sympathetic nervous
system (Fig. 42) through its abundant filamentous con-
nections with the systemic nervous system.
The consideration of the subject of excretion from the
cerebro-spinal lymph cavities may be carried a step farther
by regarding the orbits with their contained accessory parts
as conducive to that function. Thus the eyes are said to
u stare," or to stand out of, to " sink," or to be drawn into,
n6 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
their sockets, the reason of which must be sought for in
the distribution of the more liquid and plastic contents of
the orbits. These contents are continuous with the con-
tents of the cerebro-spinal cavity, and hence must be
affected more or less by the influences affecting that cavity
in relation to intra-cranial and intra-spinal pressure.
For example, a paroxysm of whooping cough may result
in profuse lachrymation, injection of the conjunctival
vessels, with other intra-ocular changes, to which may be
added more or less swelling of the whole palpebral
regions.
Again, an attack of choleraic diarrhoea is usually quickly
followed or accompanied by a " sinking " of the eyes, which
in this light we may regard as a withdrawal of the fluid
usually present within the orbits, through the foramina
communicating with the cranial cavity, as a consequence of
the strength of the currents, serous or lymph, towards the
excreting intestinal mucous surfaces.
These may be regarded as typical examples of the role
played in the economy of excretion from the nervous
system by the " ebbs and flows " of the cerebro-spinal fluid,
in its functions of floating that system and providing a
means of disposal for its effete materials.
The horizontal position in some individuals, a prolonged
act of stooping, or the suspension of the body head down-
wards, will induce swelling or puffing of the eyelids by, on
this theory, allowing the fluid cerebro-spinal contents to
gravitate into the orbital cavities through the before-
mentioned foramina, the sub-dural and sub-arachnoid spaces
being continuous with these cavities.
The condition of the eyes and orbits, so regarded, may,
therefore, be looked upon as very " tell tale " by the
observant physician and surgeon, and as affording valuable
information in the work of diagnosis. Moreover, such
questions arise out of the foregoing as whether, or not,
tapping might be desirable and practicable periorbitally, or
lumbar puncture resorted to as a curative agency, as a
means of relief, or for diagnostic purposes.
In the light of these views some obscure problems
relating to the origin and progress of such diseases as
rheumatism, gout, influenza, ague, etc., seem to have a
THE CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID 117
means of explanation not hitherto available, or possible, and
a possible application of therapeutic principles to their
prevention, alleviation, and cure not before in our posses-
sion. For instance, to take an example, influenza seems
to pass, so far as its " materies morbi" is concerned,
through the nervous system without necessarily extending
outside of it, or into adjacent structures ; thus, the microbe
(or its spore) of the disease reaches the cerebro-spinal fluid
through the olfactory and other neural channels, and finds
the needful medium in the cerebro-spinal lymph in which
to develop when the phenomena characterising the attack
begin. These " wax and wane," it may be, spontaneously,
or it may be by medical help, and convalescence ensues, it
may be, without the temperature, pulse, or general health
suffering to even a small extent, all this being effected by
the excretion of the foreign organisms and their results, or
toxins, through the various points of exit afforded in the
nasal, pharyngeal, coccygeal, and cutaneous excretory
organisms, directly or otherwise by overflowing into the
motor or sympathetic areas.
In further connection with the subject of nervine excre-
tion, we might mention some well-marked excretory areas
into which the systemic nervine and general lymphatics
may have a common point of exit, such as the axillary
regions, where the tufts of hair usually grow, the peri-
umbilical region, and the inter-digital regions of the hands
and feet.
From this enumeration, and from the description of
the naso-pharyngeal and coccygeal points of exit, it will
be observed that the excretory organisms connected with
the nervous system are usually located in sheltered but
abundantly mobile spots, generally at junctures or bifur-
cations, with the great exception of the cutaneous sweat
glands, in order seemingly to afford the most ready exits
as well as the most guarded, the most yielding, and the
most elastic.
Moreover, the local sensations or sensory disturbances,
preceding and accompanying the various acts of excretion
from these exits seem to be more or less akin in incidence
and character, consisting mainly of a disturbance of one
or more histologically related sensory nerve fibres of a
n8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
more, or less, profound degree, which results in producing
such responsive involuntary acts as sneezing, with more,
or less, involuntary friction, and more, or less, powerful
voluntary agitation of the regions involved, proving that
the importance of cerebro-spinal relief is great and must
be accomplished.
EXTRACT IX. a.
THE LESSER CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH EXCRETORY
MECHANISMS, OTIC, OPTIC, AND OTHERS.
The question here presents itself — Do we see, in the
reputed secretory structures of the dual auditory apparatus,
productive machinery and raw material enough, so to
speak, to meet their large requirements ? and in answer to
it we think we are warranted, in the presence of the
suggested deficiency, in saying, at the least, that we ought
to look for means whereby, in case of necessity, they can,
or may, be supplemented.
In looking for such means we think we have found
them in the passage of " ready formed" cerebro-spinal
fluid or lymph through the internal auditory meatus
(Fig. 43), along the inter-meningeal spaces and coverings
of the auditory nerves, which coverings become continuous
with the periosteum and membranous textures of the
inner ears — their inter-spaces likewise becoming continuous
with the peri- and endo-lymph spaces, their respective fluid
contents commingling and forming common reservoirs.
Thus, we think, is provided a supplementary or, more truly,
a wholesale lymph supply sufficient for all the requirements
of the auditory apparatus, and which, as long as a physio-
logical condition of the structures and fluids concerned is
maintained, can be relied upon.
The cerebro-spinal lymph enters the hollow structures
of the inner ears in the manner mentioned, and leaves
them by certain lymph channels, described in text-books
on the subject, as well as, we think, by the reputedly blind
endolymph ducts, which leave the skull and exude, or
120
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
exosmose, their superabundant fluid into the inter-spaces
of the dura mater behind and below the petrous processes
of the temporal bones where it finds a means of circulatory
disposal into the extra-dural lymph spaces of the spinal
cavity. We take it, also, that a portion of the intra-
auditory lymph finds its way by osmosis into the cavity
of the middle ear, where it moistens and lubricates the
Fig. 42. — Diagrammatic sketch from behind of the roots of
the ninth, tenth, and eleventh nerves, with their ganglia
and communications. (From Bendz.)
A, part of the cerebellum above the fourth ventricle ; B, medulla oblongata ; C, spinal
cord ; 1, glosso-pharyngeal nerve ; 2, pneumo-gastric ; 3, 3, 3, spinal accessory ;
4, jugular ganglion of the glosso-pharyngeal ; 5, petrous ganglion ; 6, tympanic
branch ; 7, ganglion of the root of the pneumo-gastric ; 8, auricular branch ;
9, ganglion of the trunk of the pneumo-gastric; jo, branch from the upper
ganglion to the petrous ganglion of the glosso-pharyngeal ; 11, inner portion of
the spinal accessory ; 12, outer portion ; 13, pharyngeal branch of the pneumo-
gastric ; 14, 14, superior laryngeal branch ; 15, twigs connected with the sympa-
thetic ; 16, internal part of the spinal accessory prolonged with the pneumo-gastric.
structures therein and finds a means of exit along the
Eustachian tubes into the pharynx, the fenestra rotunda^
and what remains of the fenestra ova/is uncovered, or
unoccupied by its attachment to the stapes, constituting
the main routes by which the two main lymph reservoirs,
or cisterns, of the cochlea and semicircular canals
respectively relieve themselves, according to the exigencies
of intra-otic pressure. A singular and suggestive pheno-
menon, somewhat, akin to that observed in the pineal
LESSER CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH 121
gland, takes place here in connection with the foramen
ovale (Figs. 43, 44) and saccule, where there is frequently
found a collection of otoliths or crystals, pointing to the
operation of similar producing factors on similar fluids, or
crystal-containing media.
Before concluding, we perhaps ought to call attention to
the fact that analysis of the fluids here mentioned, viz. the
Fig. 43. — Diagrammatic view from before of the parts composing
THE ORGAN OF HEARING OF THE LEFT SIDE. (After Arnold. )
The temporal bone of the left side, with the accompanying soft parts, has been
detached from the head, and a section has been carried obliquely through it so as
to remove the front of the meatus externus, half the tympanic membrane, and
the upper and anterior wall of the tympanum and Eustachian tube. The meatus
internus has also been opened, and the bony labyrinth exposed by the removal
of the surrounding parts of the petrous bone, i, the pinna and lobe ; 2 to 2',
meatus externus ; 2', membrana tympani ; 3, cavity of the tympanum ; above 3,
the chain of small bones; 3', opening into the mastoid cells ; 4, Eustachian tube ;
5, meatus internus, containing the facial (uppermost) and auditory nerves ; 6,
placed on the vestibule of the labyrinth above the fenestra ovalis ; a, apex of the
petrous bone ; b, internal carotid artery ; c, styloid process ; d, facial nerve
i*suing from the stylo-mastoid foramen ; e, mastoid process ; f, squamous part of
the bone.
cerebro-spinal fluid, and the otic, peri-, and endo-lymph, so
far as we have been able to discover, yield substantially
the same chemical results, or, at any rate, attest that these
results do not differ more from each other than the results
obtained by different analysts do from each other when
examining the same fluid, — and to claim that we are
justified in hazarding the opinion that a common chemical
122
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
composition, a continuity of circulatory media, and the
common function which they respectively subserve in the
YJ3.S.C,
Fig. 44.— Plan of the right membranous labyrinth viewed from
the mesial aspect. (e.a.s.) 2^.
u, utricle, with its macula and the three semicircular canals with their ampullae ;
j, saccule; aq.v., aqueductusvestibuli ; s.e., saccus endolymphaticus ; c.r.,canalis
reuniens; c.c, canal of the cochlea.
economy of the cerebro-spinal lymph circulation, they are
identical in origin, and that the cerebro-spinal lymph
Fig. 45. — Membranous labyrinth and nervous twigs detached.
Magnified. (Breschet.)
k' facial nerve in the meatus auditorius internus ; /, anterior division of the auditory
nerve giving branches, 0, m, n, to the utricle and the ampullae of the superior
and external canals ; /', vestibular division of the auditory nerve, giving a
branch, g, to the saccule, another to the posterior ampulla, g, and a third (r) to
the cochlea, r\ a, b, c, ampullae of the superior, external, and posterior semi-
circular canals respectively , d, the united part of the superior and posterior
canals ; e, the macula of the utricle \f, the saccule.
producing and distributing machinery is called upon in
the physiological or healthy condition of the parts involved
to meet all demands. It must be regarded, however, as
LESSER CEREBROSPINAL LYMPH
123
EPITHELIUM
CONJUNCTIVAE"-;,
MUSCULUS
CILIARIS*.
.CANAUS
^ schlemm:i
ARTERIA
CENTRALIS —
RETIN/e
0^,c
m
sst/
OURAj. SHEATH
Fig. 46.— Diagram of the right adult human eye, divided nearly
horizontally through the middle. (E. A. Schafer.) Magnified
five times.
The line ab passes through the equator, xy through the visual axis of the eye.
likely that in case of obstruction of the channels of supply
of this fluid a means exists and can be drawn from
124
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
whereby these lymph cisterns can be replenished, and the
integrity of the apparatus of audition maintained, and this
means, we think, is to be found in the endothelial linings
of the inner ears generally, with their surroundings and
supporting blood supply. A dual mechanism, therefore,
we think, exists in this cryptic region for securing the
continuity of auditory sense-impressions and supplying
the higher cerebral centres with a highly specialised
Fig. 47.
-Vertical section of the left oki
(Allen Thomson.)
T AND ITS CONTENTS.
The section has been carried first obliquely through the middle of the optic foramen
and optic nerve as far as the back of the eyeball, and thence forward through the
eyeball, eyelids, etc. a, frontal bone ; b, superior maxillary; c, eyebrow ; d, the
upper, and d', the lower eyelid, partially open, showing the section of the tarsi,
the eyelashes, etc. ; e, e, the reflection of the conjunctiva from the upper and
lower eyelids to the surface of the eyeball ; f, the levator palpebrae superioris
muscle ; £, the upper, g', the lower rectus muscle ; //, the inferior oblique muscle
divided; 1, 1, the optic nerve divided in its sheath; 2, the cornea; 2', the
sclerotic ; 3, aqueous chamber ; 4, crystalline lens ; 5, vitreous chamber.
tributary to the continually needed stream of information
from the outer world.
Another region " watered " by the cerebro-spinal fluid,
and which affords a means of exit to that fluid when
required, is the ophthalmic (Figs. 46, 47), which, divided
into two and situated at the anterior aspect of the head
where the head and face join, constitutes the most
prominent and tell-tale feature of the physical and
intellectual microcosm within the organisms of both man
and animal.
LESSER CEREBROSPINAL LYMPH 12
Here, as in the auditory organisms, the cerebro-spinal
fluid seems to perform many very important offices during
its passage through, and presence in, the optic organs,
ingress to which it obtains along the subdural and subarach-
noid spaces (Fig. 47), where they leave the cranial cavity
to enter the orbits along the neurilemmar inter-spaces
surrounding the optic nerve as well as along the sheaths
of the blood-vessels which pass from within the skull to
these organs, and which are also accompanied by meningeal
sheaths. Here, moreover, is afforded by the plentiful
presence of the cerebro-spinal fluid and accumulations
Fig. 48.— Meibomian glands of the left eyelids as seen from
BEHIND.
a, a, palpebral conjunctiva ; i, lachrymal gland ; 2, openings of seven or eight of its
ducts ; 3, upper and lower puncta lachrymalia ; 6, 6, ends of the upper and lower
Meibomian glands, of which the openings are indicated along the margins of the
eyelids.
of fatty post- orbital material, two padded, or cushioned,
chambers in which shock is deadened and freedom of
movement secured, so that the two most delicate sense
organs can perform their functions without " let or
hindrance." Here also, if we patiently follow the windings
of the cerebro-spinal lymph circulation of the eyes, we find
a succession of spaces and channels leading into the very
interior of these organs, and perceive that the vitreous
and aqueous humours are but two great pools, or cisterns,
(Fig. 46) of that fluid, continuous with and physically —
apart from specialised organic matters — indistinguishable
from it ; and, therefore, to " all intents and purposes "
drawn from and mostly dependent upon it ; moreover, we
126
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
are disposed to think that the lachrymal glands (Figs. 48,
49), and other aquiferous textures within the orbits are
Fig. 49.— Front of the left eyelids with the lachrymal canals
and nasal duct exposed.
1, 1, upper and lower lachrymal canals, showing towards the eyelids the narrow bent
portions and the puncta lachrymalia ; 2, lachrymal sac ; 3, the lower part of the
nasal duct ; 4, plica semilunaris ; 5, caruncula lachrymalis.
likely to derive their supplies of fluid from the same
source, and along the neurilemmar inter-spaces surrounding
their nerve supplies.
Fig. 50.— Semidiagrammatic views of the inner surface of the
right cerebral hemisphere of the foital brain at various
stages of development. (From Schmidt.)
I, 2, and 3, are from foetuses of the respective ages of eight, ten, and sixteen weeks ;
4, from a foetus of six months, a, lamina terminalis or part of the first primary
vesicle which adheres to the sella turcica ; b, section of the cerebral peduncle
as it passes into the thalamus and corpus striatum ; the arched line which
surrounds this bounds the great cerebral fissure ; c, anterior part of the fornix and
the septum lucidum ; d, inner part of the arch of the cerebrum, afterwards the
hippocampus major and posterior part of the fornix ; e, corpus callosum very short
in 3, elongated backwards in 4 ; in 4, f, the marginal convolution ; /', calloso-
marginal fissure ; g, gyrus fornicatus ; p', the parieto-occipital fissure descending
to meet the calcarine fissure ; I, olfactory bulb ; F, P, O, T, frontal, parietal,
occipital and temporal lobes.
If all this be true — and we see nothing anatomically,
histologically, or physiologically, in the organisation and
LESSER CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH 127
Fig. 51. — View of the inner surface of the right half of the
foetal brain of about six months. (From Reichert.)
F, frontal lobe ; P, parietal ; O, occipital ; T, temporal ; I, olfactory bulb ; II, right
optic nerve ; fp, calloso-marginal fissure ; p, external ; p' ', internal parts of the
parieto-occipital fissure ; h, calcarine fissure ; g, gyrus fornicatus ; c, c, corpus
callosum ; s, septum lucidum ; f, placed between the middle commissure and the
foramen of Monro ; v, in the upper part of the third ventricle immediately below
the velum interposituin and fornix : v' , in the back part of the third ventricle
below the pineal gland, and pointing by a line to the aqueduct of Sylvius ; v", in
the lower part of the third ventricle above the infundibulum ; r, recessus pinealis
passing backwards from the tela choroidea ; pv, pons Varolii ; Ce, cerebellum.
Fig. 52. — Transverse section through the brain of a sheep's
embryo OF 2.7 CM. in length. (From Balfour, after Kolliker.)
The section passes through the hemispheres and third ventricle, si, corpus striatum ;
th, optic thalamus ; /, third ventricle ; c', their divergence into the walls of the
hemispheres ; /, lateral ventricle with choroid plexus//; h, hippocampus major ;
f, primitive falx ; a, orbito-sphenoid ; sa, presphenoid ; p, pharynx ; ch, chiasma ;
o, optic nerve ; mm, foramen of Monro ; s, covering of lateral ventricles.
128
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
structure of the parts to contradict it, but, on the contrary,
and by embryological enquiry, we can clearly satisfy
ourselves of its claims to belief — then we think we have
established another reason calling for a continuation of
this enquiry, with a view to the obtainment of ever
required utilitarian results, such as a clearer knowledge of
Fig. 53.— Sketch of a superficial dissection of the face, showing
the position of the parotid and submaxillary glands.
(Allen Thomson.) §.
/, parotid gland ; p' , socia parotidis ; d, the duct of Stenson before it perforates the
buccinator muscle ; a, transverse facial artery ; n, n, branches of the facial nerve
emerging from below the gland ; f, the facial artery passing out of a groove in
the sub- maxillary gland and ascending on the face ; s >/:, superficial portion of the
submaxillary gland.
the etiology of the diseases of these organs, and their
relationships to their structural elements as affected by
these views, as, for instance, where discontinuity of usually
firmly adherent and coherent textures becomes effected
along lines previously open in embryonic conditions, such
as occur in the condition known as detached retina.
The enumeration of the special otic and ophthalmic
cerebro-spinal lymph excretory agencies, as well as the
LESSER CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH 129
more detailed and wholesale olfactory and pituitary outlets,
suggest that a kindred excretory phenomenon occurs at
the outlets of the salivary glands (Figs. 53, 54), where
the more aqueous elements of that fluid, conveyed hither
neurilemmically, may be said to afford a basis for the
production and discharge of the specific salivary fluids,
where their utilisation in the process of digestion is so
intimately associated with the glosso-pharyngeal mucosa.
It would therefore appear, if these observations are
grounded on truth, that a large field for physiological and
Fig. 54. — View of the right submaxillary and sublingual glands
from the inside. (Allen Thomson.)
Part of the right side of the jaw, divided from the left at the symphysis, remains ;
the tongue and its muscles have been removed ; and the mucous membrane of
the right side has been dissected off and hooked upwards so as to expose the sub-
lingual glands ; s m, the larger superficial part of the submaxillary gland ; f, the
facial artery passing through it; sm', deep p >rtion prolonged on the inner side
of the mylo-hyoid muscle mh ', si, is placed below the anterior large part of the
sublingual gland, with the duct of Bartholin partly shown; si', placed above
the hinder small end of the gland, indicates one or two of the ducts perforating
the mucous membrane ; d, the papilla, at which the duct of Wharton opens in
front behind the incisor teeth ; d', the commencement o* the duct ; h, the hyoid
bone ; «, the gustatory nerve ; close to it is the submaxillary ganglion.
pathological research lies open, the active occupation and
exploitation of which may result in positive additions to
human comfort and happiness.
In this connection we would also draw special attention
to the cerebro-spinal lymph excretory regime of the
pneumo-gastrics (Fig. 55) in their multitudinous relation-
ships with the thoracic and abdominal viscera, where,
besides their specific function of systemic innervation of
these organs, they also afford great facilities for the
functionally useful outflow of that lymph into their
textures, and so passively afford channels by which the
progress of morbid agencies can find a free passage from
the intracranio-spinal areas to the thoracic and abdominal
i3o
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
visceral areas, and vice versa — a doctrine which affords a
ready and clear explanation of many puzzling bacterio-
logical and chemico-physiological problems in the etiology
Fig. 55. — Diagram of the roots and anastomosing branches of
THE PNEUMO-GASTKIC AND NEIGHBOURING NERVES. (From Sappey,
after Hirschfeld and Leveille.)
1, facial nerve ; 2, glossopharyngeal with the petrous ganglion ; 2', connection of the
digastric branch of the facial nerve with the glo^so pharyngeal nerve ; 3, pneumo-
gastric, with its- two ganglia; 4, spinal accessory; 5. hypoglossal ; 6, superior
cervical ganglion of the s\ mpathetic ; 7, 7, loop of union between the first two
cervical nerves ; 7, carotid branch of the sympathetic ; 9, nerve of Jacobson
(tympanic), given off from the petrous ganglion ; 10. its filaments to the sympa-
thetic ; 11, twig to the Eustachian tube ; 12, twig to the fenestra ovalis ; 13, twig
to the fenestra rotunda ; 14, small superficial petrosal nerve ; 15, large superficial
petrosal nerve; 16, otic ganglion; 17, auricular branch of the pneumo-gastric ;
18, connection of the spinal accessory with the pneumo-gastric ; 19, union of the
hypoglossal with the first cervical nerve ; 20, union between the sterno-mastoid
branch of the spinal accessory and that of the second cervical nerve ; 21, pharyn-
geal plexus ; 22, superior laryngeal nerve ; 23, external laryngeal ; 24, middle
cervical ganglion of the sympathetic.
and pathological sequence of morbid events, and a means
of linking up the morbid elements of many apparently
disunited and incongruous pathological states of both head
and trunk. Thus the simultaneous, or immediately con-
secutive, presence of similar bacterial organisms, such as
LESSER CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH 131
the pneumococcus. in the cerebro-spinal cavity, the cardial,
and other thoracic and abdominal structural elements,
must be recognised as one of continuity, due to unalterable
histological and anatomical relationships, and the same
may be said of many allied conditions where disease is
spread by the gradual involvement of structurally and
vascularly connected structures and organs throughout the
whole body.
EXTRACT IX. b.
ENUMERATION OF THE MECHANISMS CONCERNED IN
THE ELIMINATION OF CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH.
The excretory mechanisms already described pertain to
the nervous system proper and its containing textures. The
addendum here dealt with belongs to the extra-nervine
aspect of that system, and flows out of what seems to be
a possible or probable leakage along the great arterial
vessels supplying the brain, viz. the external and internal
carotids, as well as the jugular veins. These vessels at
their entrance to, and exit, respectively, from the skull, and
their distribution within it, are bathed with cerebro-spinal
fluid, and supported by it, much in the same way as the
cephalic nerves proper are, hence the possibility and
probability of leakage along their adventitial coverings,
and the subsequent invasion in detail of the cervical and
thoracic regions of the body related to these vessels by the
residual products of brain waste, and hence the physiological
and hygienic necessity for preventing such an occurrence.
The required preventive provision seems to us to be
supplied by two so-called ductless glandular bodies, or
more probably lymph hearts, called the carotid glands,
situated respectively on each side of the neck, at the
bifurcation of the common into the external, and internal,
carotids, where they form the continuations of the
common carotid artery. Here the leaking cerebro-spinal
fluid is received by the carotid glands in gravitating
currents, as they percolate through the arterial and
venous adventitial cellular textures, and is prevented
from descending into the vital organs below, and rendered
CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH MECHANISMS 133
innocuous by the glandular agency of these organs, ere it
is permitted to re-enter the blood streams. All this is, no
doubt, and may rightly be called highly speculative, but
still we hold it to be so strongly reasonable that we have
felt constrained to add it to what we have already
advanced with regard to the economy of cerebro-spinal
fluid excretion, as well as for the purpose of enabling us
to assign a living " everyday " working function to two
organisms for which anatomists have hitherto failed to
find a probable use. These cystiform organs are possessed
of the requisite anatomical structure — glandular and neuro-
muscular— to enable them to perform the work of
collection, chemico-physiological treatment, and excretion
of whatever fluid can reach them along the adventitial
envelopes of the two carotids and jugulars, which are
necessarily, anatomically, and histologically, continuous
through their envelopes with the dura-arachnoid textures ;
hence, we are strongly of opinion that they perform this
function, a function, moreover, very much akin to that
which we have assigned to the coccygeal gland ; another
organism, furthermore, with which anatomists are accus-
tomed to classify them, preparatory to shelving them
amongst the quantities " negligible" where in a single
sentence they are usually labelled and consigned to rest in
oblivion until next "stock-taking."
We would here reiterate the assertion in this connection,
that no " unnecessary structure " can be allowed evolutionarilyy
so to speak, to be repeated in every generation of the human,
or other race^ with the attributes of a highly organised texture,
without its being called upon to perform a work in consonance
with its anatomical character and position to justify its retention
and prevent its involution and disappearance. We may thus
rest assured that it is altogether unjustifiable to describe
any organ, or texture, now surviving in the human body
whose function we are ignorant of as a " survival " only,
and, therefore, as an encumbrance, which, in these advanced
days of evolutionarily determined human destiny, we are
warranted, or called upon, voluntarily to neglect, or to
sacrifice.
Therefore, we take it that, if the law of evolution
is to be believed, and if it is to have a practical bearing
i34 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
on human progress and happiness, we must disabuse
our minds of, and guard against, the great fallacies capable
of being perpetrated by the careless or unscientific use
of such terms as survival, but not of the fittest \ and reversion
to earlier, and, it may be, long since extinct types ; all
which represent only the continuous, contemporary, and
balanced working of the laws of involution and evolution
as the one great determining and operative law of progress,
in the world, inorganic, organic, and human.
Human progress generally, as well as particularly,
although the outcome, to some extent, of what seems
to be free and independent individual, or communal,
human effort, is no exception to the universal incidence
of this law, a fact which all human history attests ; it,
therefore, behoves the votaries of whatever science, or
cult, which can in any way affect the rate of that human
progress, to put the methods and manners of that science,
or cult, so clearly and intelligibly into the possession of
their successors, as that it can be afterwards said, in
all truth, by these successors, " he that runneth may
read."
Since the above was written regarding the carotid
glands, or bodies, it has been found that an affection
of the neck called the " potato-like tumour " takes its
origin from the carotid glands, one, or other, or both,
and that it has a course quite distinct from any other
known growth in these regions, and is possessed of a
structure endothelial in character, and just such as could
be evolved from occlusion of the excretory outlets of
the gland, or glands, with pathological accumulation and
formative arrangement of their resultant secretion and
tissue elements. We, therefore, feel warranted in claim-
ing this pathological discovery as a proof of the truth of
our physiological finding with regard to these much over-
looked bodies.
EXTRACT X.
ON THE SENSORY DISTURBANCES, OR ESTHETIC
PHENOMENA, OCCURRING AT, AND AROUND, THE
POINTS OF EXIT OF THE CEREBROSPINAL LYMPH,
ANTECEDENT TO, AND DURING, EXCRETION.
That the character of the disturbances, or feelings, or
sensations, is determined by their locale we have long
observed, and, accordingly, have now become satisfied
that the painful feelings and itching sensations experienced
at times more or less over the whole sensory surfaces
of the body, are most largely situated at the points of
exit of the cerebro-spinal lymph from its containing
vasculature, viz. from the individual sweat glands of
the skin generally, the axillary sweat glands and inter-
digital surfaces in particular, along with the coccygeal
gland duct vasculature, the Schneiderian mucosa, and the
tonsillo-glossal mucosa.
Obstructed exit of the cerebro-spinal lymph, loaded
with, it may be, toxic, and, it must certainly be with effete,
matter, gives rise to sensory disturbance at the points of
obstructed exit, in degree proportionate, we may conceive,
indeed, believe, to the amount of stasis and intensity of
toxicity of the lymph in process of excretion, and hence
may vary, from the slightest feeling of itching, to the most
intense feeling of smarting, or acute pain. Thus local, or
general, disturbance may be felt as prurigo at the cutaneous
exits, annoying itching in one or both axillae, and slight or
exasperating irritation at, and around, the anus, while slight,
or severe, sneezing may characterise involvement of the
olfactory exits, and more or less severe pain may be the
136 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
outcome of the implication of the pituitary excretional
mechanism. We may further conceive, and, when obser-
vation and experiment have tested the value of the
conception, we are persuaded it will be found true, that
many of the other sensory disturbances originating in, and
disposed throughout, the sympathetically innervated areas
of the body will be found to depend on the existence of
similar obstructive phenomena in the final distribution, or
elimination, of the sympathetico-systemic lymph within the
texture and parenchyma of the parts and organs involved.
Thus pneumonia, endocarditis, gastro-enteric catarrh, some
hepatic, splenic, and renal troubles, may stand as types of
the diseased conditions and sensory disturbances directly
traceable to excretion of effete and tainted cerebro-spinal
lymph along the pneumogastric and connected sympathetic
nervature, when an exit has been denied it through the
usual systemic exits, and when, in consequence, it has
followed the lines of least resistance, until it has finally
been disposed of, as here indicated, freely, or interruptedly.
Contemporary with, or subsequent to, the occurrence
of these cerebro-spinal lymph exit sensory phenomena, a
local, or general, hyperaemia, or sometimes inflammation,
may show itself at, or around, the points of exit, and
become the diseased condition for which relief is at last
sought. When such is the case it will behove us to note
particularly the order and manner of etiological sequence
and morbid development of the disorder, so as the more
scientifically to obtain the " key to the situation," and
thereby to obtain proper indications for treatment. We
are convinced that we are warranted in stating that it
would not be too great an estimate of the frequency of the
relationship of disturbed cerebro-spinal lymph excretion
to modified, or morbid, sensory phenomena, were we to put
it at fifty per cent., and it may well be much more, of the
whole negative and positive departures from the standard
of normal physiological aesthesia ; therefore, we are strongly
of opinion that great practical results are likely to follow
from a recognition of the intrinsic value of this estimate
in the work of diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of
disease, and that, moreover, by it a clearer light will be
shed on the character and nature of some of the most
ON THE SENSORY DISTURBANCES 137
recondite subjects in the whole category of nervine disease,
as it is met with, especially in the peripheral aspect of the
nervous system. Itching and pain, perverted, or abnormal,
aesthesia, primary and secondary, original and resultant,
become the symptomatic finger-posts guiding us along
the Aesculapian way, so to speak, and which, when utilised
with a due appreciation of, and dependence on, their
intrinsic value in the detection of cause and effect, will
illuminate and render more traceable the direction of some
of its obscure windings and less explored byeways, amid
the uncertainty surrounding the genesis and progress of
many of the diseases of the peripheral aspect of the
systemic, as well as the sympathetic, nervous systems
individually and conjointly. Abolished, disturbed, and
perverted sensation may often begin and end as simple
sensory phenomena, indicating only the most ephemeral
interference with the prevalence of normal sensory function,
and nothing but a temporary, and generally mechanical,
impediment to the operation of the normal sensory
physiological conditions and factors at work in the causa-
tion of afferent, or sensory, nervine genesis and conduction
— the condition disappearing on the removal of the
impediment and the restoration of the neural patency
of the implicated nervature. When, however, as it no
doubt many times is, the impediment to normal sensory
innervation is more or less permanent, we may regard the
discovery of what the impediment is as affording the
necessary indicator of the line, or lines, of treatment to be
adopted in the removal of the diseased condition, and the
restoration of both healthy structure and function.
Thus pain, and in fact every disturbed sensory pheno-
menon, becomes of the greatest value to the clinician, in
safely guiding him along correct pathological lines, until
it becomes possible for him to read, and determine, in
altered and disturbed anatomical, histological, and physio-
logical conditions, or characters, the history and progress
of the diseased state regarding which his advice has been
sought, and consequently the discovery of the most
scientific indications for the treatment to be pursued.
No doubt in estimating the practical value of pain and
disturbed sensation, in the work of diagnosis, prognosis,
138 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and treatment, it becomes imperatively necessary to
differentiate, in the first place, between the systemic and
sympathetic nervous systems, as to the part they respec-
tively play in their genesis and persistence, and whether
they are singly, or unitedly, concerned, because on this will
depend, to a great extent, the exactitude of our appreciation
of the diseased condition before us, as well as the success
of our remedial and ameliorative procedure.
Roughly speaking, almost all external pain and sensory
disturbance emanate from the systemic nervous system,
while in the same way, almost all internal pain and sensory
disturbance emanate from the sympathetic nervous
system, the exceptions being where the affected parts
happen to be innervated, to some extent, by both systems.
It may, however, be taken for granted that sympathetically
initiated pain can only be realised through the systemic
nervous system in virtue of the existence of the nervi
communic antes , and consequent intimate union subsisting
between the two nervatures. As types respectively of
the two orders of pain, we might cite those proceeding
from dermatitis and " bilious colic," so called ; the former
representing a visible peripheral sensory phenomenon, the
latter, a hidden sympathetico-systemic sensory phenomenon
— each affording a strong contrast to the other in point
of character and intensity, and requiring for its relief, or
removal, the use of a different method of procedure.
Our survey of the genesis and character of pain, or
perverted aesthesia, applies also to the motor aspect of the
systemic nervous system, and there we find the phenomena
displayed in all degrees of intensity, and over small, or
large, areas, according to the nature, and extent, of its
etiological factors : thus, in acute rheumatism, we have it
displayed generally, and less or more locally, when it may
involve muscle substance pure and simple, periosteum,
ligaments, tendons, joints, and bone, in all varieties and
combinations ; in fact, this series of pains and painful
affections constitutes one of the largest that the medical
profession is called upon to deal with.
EXTRACT XL
ON THE DRAINAGE AREAS OF THE SKULL
AND BRAIN.
The drainage areas of the skull (Figs. $6, 57) may be
divided into three, in accordance with the fossal divisions
of its base, thus : — the first, or anterior, draining the area
extending from the internal surface of the frontal bone to
the smaller wings of the sphenoid, and containing the
frontal lobes of the brain with their contained lateral
ventricles ; the second, or middle, extending from the
smaller wings of the sphenoid bone to the insertion, or
attachment, of the tentorium cerebelli to the petrous
processes of the temporal bones and the internal trans-
verse ridges of the occipital bone, and draining the middle
and occipital lobes of the brain, with the contained third
ventricle, its appended hypophysis, and its superimposed
epiphysis, and the third, or posterior, extending from the
line of attachment of the tentorium cerebelli into the
petrous processes of the temporal bones in front to the
torcular Herophili behind, and draining the cerebellum, or
small brain, with the pons Varolii, medulla oblongata, and
fourth ventricle. Each of these areas possesses in its floor
drainage facilities for the discharge of surplus cerebro-
spinal fluid in the shape of openings, or foramina, which,
along the outgoing and incoming nerve and blood-vessel
structures, allow its free, but guarded, circulation, or
outflow.
These areas represent three well-defined basal skull
terraces, (Fig. 56) or fossal plateaus, so to speak, on which,
as a foundation, the great cerebral textural divisions rest,
140
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
shelving downwards from front to back, and^ each
possessing, at its lowest floor level, a system of exits,
into which gravitate all the residual materials from! the
Fig. 56.— Internal base of the skull. (A. T.) i.
1, anterior fossa and roof of the orbit, as formed by the frontal bone ; between 2 and 3,
the foramen caecum, crista galli and cribriform plate of ethmoid ; 3, ethmoidal
spine of the sphenoid ; 4, lesser wing of sphenoid terminating posteriorly in the
anterior clinoid process, inside which is the optic foramen ; 5, placed in the
pituitary fossa, behind the olivary eminence and transverse groove of the optic
commissure ; 6, dorsum sellae, terminating in the posterior clinoid processes ; 7,
foramen rotundum, in front of which, but not seen in the figure, is the sphenoidal
fissure ; 8, foramen ovale ; 9, foramen spinosum ; 10, on the petrous bone, near
its apex, and to the inside of the hollow occupied by the Gasserian ganglion ; in
front of this is the foramen lacerum ; n, in front of the eminence of the superior
semicircular canal, and behind the hiatus Fallopii ; 12, upper border of the
petrous, marked by the superior petrosal groove ; 13, the posterior surface of
the petrous — to the inside, the internal auditory meatus, behind, the scale of bone
covering the aqueduct of the vestibule ; 14, basilar groove ; 15, anterior condylar
foramen ; 16, jugular foramen ; 17, groove of the lateral sinus ; 18, internal
occipital protuberance, and running down from it the internal occipital crest ;
between 17 and 18, the upper part of the groove of the lateral sinus, between 17
and 16, the lower part ; 19, cerebellar fossa.
ventricular cavities and inter-meningeal spaces, through
which they percolate, or are driven into, textures without the
skull, directly continuous with them, for ultimate disposal.
The cribriform foramina of the ethmoid bone, the early
DRAINAGE AREAS OF THE SKULL 141
central and lateral foramina of the basi-sphenoid bone,
with the foramen magnum of the occipital bone, constitute
Fig. 57.— External base of the skull shown in figure 56. (A.T.) \.
1, palate plate of the superior maxillary bone; 2, palate plate of the palate bone;
3, anterior palatine canal ; 4, is placed outside the posterior palatine canal, inside
the tuberosity of the superior maxilla, and in front of the smaller posterior pala-
tine canals ; 5, inner surface of the external pterygoid plate ; 6, is placed within
the posterior opening of the right nasal fossa on the internal pterygoid plate ; 7,
vomer ; X , posterior opening of the pterygo-palatine canal in front of the fora-
men lacerum ; 8, spheno-maxillary fissure leading into the orbit : 9, foramen
spinosum ; 10, foramen ovale ; 11, placed on the apex of the petrous bone, between
the foramen lacerum and the inferior opening of the carotid canal ; 12, jugular
foramen ; 13, articular eminence of the temporal bone ; 14. external auditory
meatus ; 15, glenoid fossa in front of the fissure of Glaser ; 16, tympanic plate or
posterior part of the glenoid fossa, close to the styloid process, behind which is
seen the stylo-mastoid foramen ; 17, mastoid process, and to its inside the digastric
and occipital grooves; 18, basilar process of the occipital bone, and in front the
mark of the still incomplete union with the body of the sphenoid bone ; 19, condyle
of the occipital bone ; 20, is placed in the foramen magnum, and points to the
inner opening of the anterior condylar foramen ; 21, posterior condylar foramen ;
22, jugular process of the occipital bone ; 23, external occipital crest running
down from the protuberance ; 24, superior curved line of the occipital bone ; 25,
26, inferior curved line.
the main sewers, so to speak, through which the cerebral
lymph circulation obtains a regulated and safeguarded
142
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
outflow, and one or all of which are simultaneously, or con-
secutively, available during the continuance, or existence,
of the normal physiological conditions, for the maintenance,
or preservation, of the normal intra-cranial pressure, and
the obviation of its undue increase, or diminution.
Supplementary to these we may include, or claim, the
Pacchionian bodies, or extensions of the arachnoid, which
traverse, or run through, the inner table of the calvarium,
more especially in certain regions of its upper aspect, as
completing the tutelary provisions of the great brain
drainage structures and mechanisms.
/>*
°caz
Fig. 58.— Outline of a longitudinal section through the brain
OF A chick OF ten days. (After Mihalkovics.)
h, cerebral hemisphere ; olf, olfactory lobe and nerve ; st, corpus striatum ; Iv, lateral
ventricle ; ac, anterior commissure ; //, lamina terminalis ; ope, optic commissure ;
pit, pituitary gland ; in/, infundibulum ; cai, internal carotid artery ; o*, third
ventricle ; cK*, choroid plexus of third ventricle ; pin, pineal gland ; bg, corpora
higemina ; <imv, anterior medullary velum ; below which two last references are
the aqueduct of Sylvius and crura cerebri ; cbl, cerebellum ; iA, fourth ventricle ;
in, basilar artery , ps, pons Varolii ; ch*, choroid plexus of the fourth ventricle ;
obi, medulla oblongata ; r, roof of fourth ventricle.
The central cavities or ventricles of the brain drain into
and through the olfactory tracts, (Figs. 50, 51), bulbs, and
nerve extensions, anteriorly, into and through the in-
fundibulum, with its attached pituitary gland, and the
pineal gland centrally, and into and through the foramen
magnum posteriorly ; while the inter-meningeal or peri-
pheral brain spaces empty themselves through the con-
tinuous inter-meningeal spaces, which pass out through
the various openings in the skull wall along with
extensions of the meninges.
In studying this system of drainage of the skull and
brain we have been much struck with what seems also to
have impressed other observers, without, however, their
apparently guessing the developmental necessities under-
DRAINAGE AREAS OF THE SKULL 143
lying it, viz. the similarity existing between the anterior
and posterior, or upper and lower central lymph exit
arrangements of the central systemic nervous system, i.e.
between the infundibulum, pituitary gland, and attached
Fig. 59.— Sections showing the general relations of the spinal
cord to the inclosing theca, and of this to the vertebral
CANAL. (Key and Retzius.)
A, through the fifth cervical vertebra ; B, through the tenth dorsal vertebra ; C,
through the first lumbar vertebra and the foramen of exit of the twelfth dorsal
nerve-roots ; D, through the disk between the second and third lumbar vertebrae;
E, through the first sacral vertebra. In A, B, and C, the cord, covered by pia
mater, is seen in the centre, with the ligamentum denticulatum attached to it on
either side ; the nerve-roots on either side form small groups which, since they
pass obliquely downwards to their foramina of exit, are cut across ; the dura
matral sheath is separated by a considerable space from the cord, and by a
quantity of loose areolar and fatty tissue from the wall of the vertebral canal.
This tissue is in smaller amount in C. D and E are below the termination of the
cord, and show sections of the nerve-bundles of the cauda equina within the theca,
which is very large in D, but comparatively small in E, the vertebral canal in the
latter being largely occupied by adipose tissue In this are seen the sections 01
two large veins. The arachnoid is not represented in any of these sections.
excretory mechanisms, anteriorly or centrally, and the
filum terminate, the coccygeal gland, and related excretory
mechanisms posteriorly — the infundibulum having, in fact,
been even called the anterior filum terminate by some of
these observers.
10
Fig. 60.
Fig. 6i.
DRAINAGE AREAS OF THE SKULL 145
This similarity, in our opinion, is not only founded
upon, but is the outcome of, the operation of similar, or
related, developmental factors in the quasi-obliteration of
the continuity of the lumen of the neuro-enteric canal,
and in the laying down, in the interpolated metamorphic
structures, of a drainage system, by which the separated
and differentiated portions of that canal are maintained in
modified histological continuity, but altered functional role.
In our observations and studies bearing on this system of
drainage we have been much impressed by the histological
and physiological sameness involved in the processes of
the early embryonic development, separation, and differen-
tiation of the two divisions of the neuro-enteric canal, as
well as by the continuance in after life, on somewhat
corresponding lines, of some of their common character-
istics, structural and functional. Thus the " lymphoid "
element is largely in evidence in the textural arrangements
of the nasal, pharyngeal, and anal, metamorphic, or
Fig. 60. — View of the cerebrospinal axis. (After Bourgery.) I.
The right half of the cranium and trunk of the body has been removed by a vertical
section ; the membranes of the right side of the brain and spinal cord have been
cleared away, and the roots and first part of the fifth and ninth cranial nerves, and
of all the spinal nerves of the right side, have been dissected out and laid sepa-
rately on the wall of the skull and on the several vertebrae opposite to the place
of their natural exit from the cranio-spinal cavity.
F, T, O, cerebrum; C, cerebellum ; P, pons Varolii ; mo, medulla oblongata;
in s, ins, point to the upper and lower extremities of the spinal marrow ; c e, on
the last lumbar vertebral spine, marks the cauda equina ; v, the three principal
branches of the nervns trigeminus ; C i, the sub-occipital or first cervical nerve ;
Cvm, the eighth or lowest cervical nerve; D i, the first dorsal nerve; D xn,
the last dorsal ; L i, the first lumbar nerve ; L v, the last lumbar; S i, the first
sacral nerve ; S v, the fifth ; Co i, the coccygeal nerve ; s, the left sacral plexus.1
1 The relation between the bodies and spines of the vertebrae and the places of
attachment of the nerve-roots to the cord is also illustrated by this figure. For
more detailed information on this point the reader may consult Gowers, The
Diagnosis of Diseases of the Spinal Cord, 1880.
Fig. 61.— Anterior and posterior views of the medulla oblon-
gata and spinal cord with skctions. (Allen Thomson. ) \.
The cord has been divested of its membranes and of the roots of the nerves. A is an
anterior, B a posterior view. In these figures the filiform prolongation, repre-
sented separately in B', has been removed ; C shows a transverse section through
the middle of the medulla oblongata ; D, a section through the middle of the
cervical enlargement of the cord ; E, through the upper dorsal region ; F, through
the lower ; G. through the middle of the lumbar enlargement ; and H, near the
lower end of the conus medullaris.
1 to 6 refer to parts of the medulla oblongata ; the remaining numbers to parts
of the spinal cord.
1, pyramids ; 1', their decussation ; 2, olivary bodies ; 3, lateral columns ; 4,
posterior surface of the medulla oblongata ; 4', calamus scriptorius ; 5, funiculus
gracilis ; 6, posterior lateral columns passing to the side ; 7, 7, anterior median
fissure of the spinal cord ; 8, 8, anterolateral impression corresponding to the
attachments of the anterior nerve roots ; 9, 9, posterior median fissure ; 10, 10,
postero-lateral groove; X, tapering extremity of the cord; X, X , in B', filum
terminale.
146 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
interpolated tissues, as shown by the common presence
of "excretory" material and function^ which determines
consequent likeness in such pathological conditions as
adenoids of the nasal passages, enlargements of the
pharyngeal mucosa, and hemorrhoidal developments of
the post-rectal and anal parts. All which seems to us to
prove, what we may regard as axiomatic, that the operation
of like developmental factors on like, or intimately related,
organic materials results in the evolvement of like, or very
similar, developmental products, or structures, and hence
the great sameness which characterises the early condition
of the anteriorly united, and posteriorly separated, parts of
the neuro-enteric canal as to their textural conditions and
functional role ; hence, also the occurrence of such a thing
as the retention of a once common embryonic function, as
a still operative survival, in after life, such as is seen in the
secretion, or excretion, of peptone by the pio-meningeal
textures of the cerebrum and cord.
These drainage areas are determined by anatomical and
histological necessities, due to the topographical disposition
and relative position of the textural divisions of the central
nervous system, and the system of drainage is determined
by the prevailing nature — as to consistence — of the drainage
material, and the outlet conditions best available and most
favourable to the operation of the existent local physio-
logical hydrostatics and dynamics ; the principal illustration
of which we might adduce as, what may be called, the
"cloaca major" of the central drainage system of the
cerebrum, or the infundibulo-pituitary apparatus, which
receives the residual and waste products of the great body
of cerebral material emanating from the mid- and hind-
brain, and excretes it on the surface of that continually
open, generally moist, and constantly swept, glosso-
pharyngeal cavity, or highway, situated at the commence-
ment of the gastro-intestinal or alimentary canal, where it
becomes, no doubt, a factor in the process of the
functional work of that canal of no mean importance, as
becomes, at once, apparent when any local pharyngeo-oral
obstruction to its physiological fulfilment takes place.
The great cranial outlet, the foramen magnum, allows
of the free outflow of surplus cerebro-cerebellar lymph
DRAINAGE AREAS OF THE SKULL 147
into the great inter-meningeal cavities, or channels, sur-
rounding the spinal cord (Figs. 59, 60), as well as of
what escapes from the fourth ventricle by way of the
central canal, a truly considerable, or even large, quantity,
but ideally adapted, through inter-meningeal distribution
and attachments, to provide a fluid encasement and
yielding surrounding medium, in which the spinal cord is
floated without the possibility of contact with its skeletal
framework — the ligamentum dentatum acting as a dual
valve against sudden, or large, lateral displacement, while
maintaining free longitudinal movement or circulation.
Under these circumstances over-pressure is relieved,
when necessary, both in brain and cord, through the
cephalic and spinal nerve continuations of the sub-
arachnoid and sub-dural spaces, by calls being made on
both the afferent and efferent systemic nervatures,
whereby the skin and muscles are made to provide the
required outlet facilities, or excretory agencies.
EXTRACT XII. a.
ON THE GENERAL BEARINGS, AND ROLE, OF THE
HAEMAL LYMPH AND THE CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID.
That the haemal lymph, or fluid, is the earliest differen-
tiated fluid in the economy of the fecundated ovum, or in
the pre-existent germ and sperm cell elements, as well as
in the resultant, or sequential, embryo, is abundantly
obvious as a fundamental embryonic truth, and that it
continues, in conjunction with the more lately elaborated
cerebro-spinal lymph, to play a most important part in the
economy of the growing organism, is equally obvious to the
anatomist and physiologist, while, as the life of that organ-
ism lengthens out into even the senile stage, it continues
to be observed by the clinician to exercise a profound
influence on its progress in relation to its functional work,
its freedom from the attacks, and its power of resistance, of
pathogenic influences and agencies.
Thus, in the embryo, we see the early, or nascent, struc-
tures and organs evolve themselves within and inter-pene-
trated by this haemal lymph fluid, and that it is gradually
displaced by the accumulating neural lymph, as the various
structures increase in consistence and volume, and become
differentiated into anatomical and physiological systems and
entities, until the arrival of the period of post-natal, or
independent, existence finds the neural lymph, in turn, rele-
gated to the central spaces of the brain and cord and to the
peripheral, or inter-meningeal, and the inter-neurilemmar
spaces of brain, cord, and nerves respectively, and to the
dually innervated structures generally, where it, the neural
lymph, continues its gradually restricted role of mechanical
H^MAL LYMPH 149
and physiological work as an indispensable fluid in the
economy of life.
The alteration in its disposal, within, and without, the
systemic nervous system, as that system is affected by age,
shows its adaptability, in functional purpose, to every phase,
temporary and permanent, of the life history, as well as to
the "thousand and one" minute changes, which charac-
terise the daily experience of every human organism.
In its first production and disposal the lymph generally
may be likened to a culture medium, in which the growth
of the ovum, with the succeeding embryonal structural
evolutions, take place in a region of secured developmental
calm and freedom from external disturbance, and to a great
extent shut off from maternal influences — " maternal im-
pressions " notwithstanding — while, in its later embryonic
disposal, the neural lymph becomes "gathered up," so to
speak, within the neuro-enteric canal, and projected, or
diverted, along the many nervine channels, as they become
developed from the ectodermal into the meso- and hypo-
dermal areas. During these developmental phases, what is
a mere, but great, cerebro-spinal fluid cistern, or canal
system, becomes encroached upon by a gradual process of
neuro-mural thickening, and consequent general narrowing,
of its central lumen, until an organised series of spaces and
tubes alone is left to carry on the cerebro-spinal lymph
circulation in post-natal conditions.
It will, consequently, be easily evident that the immedi-
ately post-natal cerebro-spinal circulatory facilities must
mark their maximum, and that a process of solid material
encroachment from neuro-mural thickening and passive
accumulation of structural debris, or detritus, and interfere-
ment with excretional mechanisms, must ensue, in propor-
tion to the advancement of life generally, and with the
existence of environments inimical to health particularly.
It will, therefore, likewise become evident that these
natural occurrences, as they develop themselves physio-
logically, may become pathogenic, and that rational
medicine must busy itself in the discovery of means to
obviate them, or to neutralise their incidence.
The functional role of the cerebro-spinal fluid, as here
and elsewhere outlined, is a largely passive and mechanical
150
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
one, but also, as we elsewhere contend, an excretionary one.
We want, therefore, to be consistent in our estimate of its
true place in the economy of neural physiology, to disclaim
for it the nutritive function which it has been sometimes
credited with serving, inasmuch as we contend that the
nutritive material which it is supposed to convey to the
nervous textures is, during its formation, deposited from the
blood, as glia^ in the neuroglial feltage, where it is taken up
by the dendritic processes of the nerve cells, and con-
verted into nerve plasma within each cell, according to its
individual and systemic requirements. The yielding of an
elastic support and bufferage to the structures which it
encloses may, therefore, be described as its main mechanical
office, together with the maintenance of the proper propor-
tion of moisture in the inter-spaces of the brain, cord, and
nerves to secure the requisite plasticity of the true nervine
elements and the needful excretional circulation from
within these elements. Along with its excretional disposal
of effete nervine material, we would also include the
" excretional " disposal, or radiation, of surplus central
caloric and the maintenance of the normal body tempera-
ture, a function which the universality of its presence,
circulation throughout, and exits from the body render
possible and functionally easy of accomplishment.
As illustrative of the truth of the last-mentioned func-
tional work of the cerebro-spinal fluid, we would only call
attention to its almost constant disturbance in all diseased
conditions in which rise and fall of body temperature take
place, the main reason for such rise and fall being the
disturbance of cerebro-spinal lymph circulation and excre-
tion and consequent interference with heat radiation.
The cerebro-spinal fluid, as a culture medium, and
viewed in relationship to the infective invasion, incubation,
and distribution of bacterial organisms and disease germs,
may be regarded as the most ideally perfect to be found
within the whole body, on account of its intrinsic qualities,
histological environment, comparative isolation and means
of graduated escape available for shedding or emigration ;
it will, therefore, we think, be found, as research progresses,
that a very much larger number of pathogenic bacterial
organisms owe their existence and propagation to this fact
H^MAL LYMPH 151
than etiologists have hitherto believed, and that clinicians
will have, consequently, to alter their diagnosis and adapt
their treatment accordingly.
Zymosis, or bacterial proliferation, may be confined to
the cerebro- spinal fluid, and may begin and end there, but
often it is attended by bacterial attack of its containing
vasculature and organic environment, when meningeo-
neurilemmar complications arise, or by neuronal implication,
when diseases of the proper nerve elements develop the
symptoms proper to disordered nerve substance and func-
tion, as may be witnessed in such diseases as tetanus,
hydrophobia, trypanosomiasis, "rheumatism of the brain,"
" general paralysis of the insane," and many other familiar
central nervine affections. In such of these diseases, where
the neurons are attacked by the individual, or specific
bacteria belonging to a particular disease, the characteristic
symptoms of the particular disease then become manifest,
as its bacterial organisms grow and propagate themselves
according to their individual manner, whether they be
benign or malign — and in such cases they are generally the
latter — through the textures attacked being of such a
highly essential character, both in material and function, in
the economy of life and cerebration. In the neurono-
phagy processes indulged in by the individual bacterial
genus a manner of procedure and histological effect are
developed whereby, in many cases, the microscope can
distinguish the culprit and indicate the disease for the pro-
duction of which it is, by its specific action, pathologically
responsible. Thus, it becomes abundantly evident that a
wide field for the bacteriologist and clinician is here coming
into view, the exploration of which must yield abundant
information, both of a scientific, and practical, kind, for the
guidance of the future practitioner of medicine and the
satisfaction of the amour propre of pure science.
The cerebro-spinal fluid thus becomes an incubative
medium and organic vehicular element of the greatest
moment to the scientist and clinician alike, inasmuch as it
possesses attributes the appraisement of which will require
the exercise both of their intelligence and the therapeutic
use of their united deductive and practical efforts. More-
over, according to that appraisement and practical use must
152 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
follow the success of future medical and surgical procedure
in a domain of remedial and ameliorative effort peculiarly-
required in, and applicable to, the abounding neural wants
of present-day civilisation, with its almost unique material
and dynamic needs, which almost daily increase with its
quickening advancement and the increased competitive
strain, national and individual.
EXTRACT XII. b.
THE ROLE OF THE CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID AND
LYMPH PROPER.
The role of the cerebro-spinal fluid, or lymph, may, in
conclusion, be summarised, or regarded, as that of a
mechanical support and buffer, a medium for the floating
of the intra-cerebro-spinal systemic blood vasculature and
the proper systemic neural elements, as well as a vehicle
for the reception and removal of intra-neural disjecta, or
debris, and the provider of an aseptic inter-penetrating and
surrounding fluid material for the maintenance of intra-
neural hygiene, an afforder of an insulating element for
the production, reception, and storage of nervine energy
by the means of a stratum of peripheral non-conducting,
but neuro-pervious, liquid throughout the entire nervous
system, permeable from without by sensory nervine stimuli,
and communicative, from within, of motor nervine impulses
throughout the confines of the muscle areas, voluntary and
involuntary, systemic and sympathetic.
Such a bald recapitulation of some of the salient
functions of the cerebro-spinal fluid reveals the truth that
we have in it a neurally omnipresent element second in
importance to none of the non-nervous constituents of, or
connected with, the nervous system, and an element whose
physiological importance, in many other respects as well,
should ensure a whole-hearted study of it, in order that
its importance in a practical respect should be made fully
available to the practisers of the healing art, and for its
intrinsic value to the exponents of pure science, and the
lovers of truth for its own sake.
i54 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Moreover, this fluid represents the primordial fluid in
which the whole developmental events, constituting the
"life history" of organic nature in all its phases, is
wrought out, and the medium which gives or affords
currency to the whole chemico-physiological elements and
processes engaged in the great work of evolution of living
forms, and the peopling of our earth from its dead matter;
it is, therefore, a fluid whose imitation, or reproduction, by
scientific technique may enable us, when a human, or other,
life is suffering from its exhaustion or over-abundance, to
lengthen out its otherwise unexhausted vital resources,
and to round off in full proportion the story of its
" completed life," as we see, for example, in the use of
"normal saline" in hemorrhagic crises, and syncopal
attacks, or of lumbar puncture in cerebro-spinal meningitis.
Further, it forms the basis of all the actively organic, or
formative, fluids throughout the body, and passes from one
form of structural and visceral physiological fluid com-
bination, or condition, to another, as the local and general
exigencies of inter- and intra-organic circulation necessitate
and determine ; hence it is the circulatory medium for all
material interchange, chemical and physiological, and
therefore, pathological, and requires to be studied locally
and in all its continuity of circulatory disposal and
functional sequence, ere we can hope to discover its full
significance and importance, and obtain its full practical
advantages. Therefore, to follow it thus is to follow the
organic disposal of the entire ingesta, from their imbibition
to their excretion as effete materials, or until they become
egesta, and thus to traverse the whole field of biological
integration and disintegration, or, in other words, the
entire area of physiological activity and organic evolution.
We, consequently, would advise that this aspect of the
subject should be viewed whenever we attempt to take a
broad or even a " bird's eye " view of the bearing of
physiological knowledge on the progress of clinical
medicine and surgery.
In another respect it can be followed with great advan-
tage along the paths by which the cavities and inter-spaces
of the body, structural, visceral, and histological, are kept
occupied, and the physiological balance of circulation and
CEREBRO-SPINAL FLUID 155
nutrition maintained, as, for example, along the paths of
the great systemic circulations into the cavities, great and
small, where the serous and lymphoid fluids repose, or are
stored ; and, out of these, into the organs and channels
of excretion, where the final processes of chemical
and physiological change are undergone, and the vitally
exhausted residual products finally evacuated as absolutely
effete and adynamic.
The inter- and intra-structural cavities and channels thus
occupied render great mechanical services in the obviation
of structural and inter-structural voids, the bolstering of
actively functional textures, and the ballooning of collapsible
tissue elements, while at the same time affording nutri-
tional facilities for the circulation and interchange of
chemico-physiological elements in the processes of repair
and decay. The spaces and inter-spaces thus occupied
vary in size from the atomic and the cellular to that of the
largest anatomical cavity, and represent the great and
small fluid areas surrounding the histological elements of
the entire body ; and, therefore, it becomes necessary to
recognise the great physiological fact, that there is no
essential material difference in the chemical and physical
character of the occupying fluids, save in the added or
subtracted amounts of integrative and disintegrative
materials respectively, and that thus there is, and can be,
but one foundation fluid, the lymph, occupying the entire
system and effecting all the changes concerned in the
phenomena of its organic, or vegetative, life.
In thus viewing the subject of the omnipresence of a
fundamentally identical fluid element throughout the
body from which the nutritional elements are extracted,
and into which are returned in a physiologically secured
manner, for final disposal, the waste products of functional
activity, we must regard its chemical and physiological
varieties as due to the textural and visceral contributions,
for special physiological purposes and chemical desiderata
within the great vital laboratory constituting the living
and acting body, and subserving the purposes of its vital
chemistry. Consequently, the acts of alimentary absorption,
sanguineous circulation, nutrition, lymph circulation and
excretion, but illustrate the existence of varieties of this
156 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
fluid, and show, while chemically dissimilar in composition,
that they are identical in physiological operation or manner
of working, and that they make up among them a great
cycle of chemico-physiological activities through a material
or physical continuity of physiological fluidities or secre-
tions— these latter ranging from, or consisting of, the chyle,
the blood, the lymph, and the special organic fluids, such
as are poured into the alimentary canal, concluding with
the exhausted and adynamic residual materials eliminated
from the various excretionary organs as alvine, renal, and
cutaneous evacuations. It is needless to point out that
water necessarily constitutes the fluid basis of every
variety of physiological liquid, and forms the vehicle of
conveyance and the medium in which all the chemico-
physiological phenomena of tissue integration and disinte-
gration take place ; it is, therefore, the sine qua non of
nutrition in all its phases, and the element most essential
in all varieties of alimentation and dietetic formularies.
EXTRACT XIII.
SUMMARY OF STUDIES ON CIRCULATION.
" All things flow, and nothing is at rest."
" All things are in a state of flux."
The author of these words was the Greek philosopher
Heraclitus, who lived about 500 b.c. The law enun-
ciated, and the generalisation accomplished, in them
necessarily presuppose the possession, by their author,
of a knowledge of " first principles/' derived from a wide
range of observation of natural phenomena, and a grasp
of their significance which can scarcely be surpassed, or
paralleled in the whole history of, at any rate, ancient
natural science. In the terseness of their expression, and
arrangement, and in the depth of their meaning, we see
one of the most successful attempts to reach the bed-rock
of natural truth, as we may call it, and to lay for ever on it
a foundation which could bear the weight of the most
gigantic superstructure, and which could yield security
for the exercise of the best efforts of the votaries of
science, and make a worthy repository for their contribu-
tions to the sum of human knowledge.
The principal truth conveyed by them is, that matter,
in its widest, as well as, most restricted sense, in mass,
and in molecule, is ever moving, that a state of flux and
re-flux characterises the behaviour of the material universe,
and that no possible exception is to be perceived within
the sphere, sidereal, or terrestrial, of its application.
EXTRACT XIV.
ON THE PHYSICAL LAW, OR PROPERTY, OF MATTER,
KNOWN AS INERTIA.
The law, or property, of inertia, as applied in physics,
has long been accepted as axiomatic, and as universally
operative, throughout the world of matter, and that it is
relatively so we are not prepared to dispute, more than
that it should be applied only to matter in motion,
because matter at rest must be regarded as a physical
impossibility \ even in the most perfectly-conducted vacuum
experiment, where its apparent rest, is owing merely to a
temporary arrest or rather slowing, of the rate of its
continual and universal movement. The temporary
arrest, or slowing, of the rate of motion by such experi-
ments as above mentioned can only be regarded as a
u toy stoppage," which is annulled by the frictional
influence of " passing events," and the disintegrating
effects of the " hands of time," as they reduce to dust the
most durable material that can be converted into a
vacuum vessel, as it passes through space at planet speed.
Verily it may, and must, be said, that there is no " abiding
place " in nature, and that there is no exception to the
truth of that part of the law of inertia which is alone
operative in the physics of the material universe, that
matter in motion will continue for ever in motion, and
that there can be no possibility of its absolute arrest. The
apparent exceptions to this aspect of the law of inertia of
matter are only apparent and make the necessity of
accepting the truth of the law, as thus modified, absolute,
and undeniable. Moreover, all the sciences, so far as we
have been able to appreciate their demands, recognise, and
THE PHYSICAL LAW OF MATTER 159
call for, but the one reading of this great law, in their
attempts to reach the truth as it is to be found impressed
in legible characters on the " book of nature " ; their
appreciation of the affirmative aspect of the law — if we
may be allowed the expression — is universal, their regard
for the negative side of the law — in like manner — places
in bold relief, that they tacitly regard it as a negligible
quantity, a scientific curiosity, or a " survival " of the not
fittest. We, therefore, once more see, even here, where
scientific beliefs, like coal, have been crystallised into
diamonds, that negative, or neutral, elements, have
become attached to them which call for removal, that
their full lustre may be revealed, and their true value
appraised, before they become the prized and permanent
possessions, of earnest searchers after truth.
We, moreover, claim that the law of inertia, as thus
understood, should be regarded as the most far reaching
of the physical examples of circulation, and that by it
matter is affected, and directed, in its movements in
molecule and in mass, in both its organic and inorganic,
regions ; in its forms visible to the naked eye, as well as
in those which can only be revealed by the aid of micro-
scope, and telescope ; and by inference, those others,
lying beyond our ken, which appeal to our intelligence
only as articles of scientific faith. Again, therefore, we
feel ourselves constrained to repeat : circulatio circula-
tionum omnia circulatio, and that — instead of banishing
" perpetual motion " to the limbo of the unknowable — we
must regard it as the very pivot on which the phenomena
of the universe revolve, and the foundation on which
they may be said to rest, to use a word which is strangely
contrary in meaning, and a complete contrast to the entire
problem under discussion, but nevertheless embodying a
fragment of the truth on which alone belief itself, when
sifted from all untruth, may find a resting-place, and a
calm repose after its vicissitudes of a change and decay,"
of strength, and weakness, of age, and rejuvenescence, of
rejection, and acceptance, negation, and affirmation.
The teaching of modern physics is, but a continuation,
and illustration, of this great truth in its wider, more
elaborated, finished, and cultured, aspects.
160 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
One of these aspects is concerned with its bearings on
the subject of " circulation " generally, but more especially
of " circulation, " as it is to be met with, and illustrated,
in the economy of animal, and vegetable, life.
This subject is now well worn, and has done great and
good work in clearing up many of the secrets of animated
nature, and, we think, it has still much to do in the same
field, ere we can afford to lay it aside as an instrument
which has ceased to be of use to the exponents of modern
biological science. Personally, we think that a wider
and fuller use, may still be made of it, in the study of
animal and vegetable, or biological, statics, and dynamics,
with a sure prospect of its being able to advance the
conquest of research into some of the mysterious regions
of this field, and others, that lie immediately ahead of the
pioneers of natural science. As proving our confidence in
this sanguine forecast, we are tempted to permit ourselves,
at the outset of our supplementary remarks, rather than
at their close, to crystallise our belief in the truth of what
we say, as we have done before, by using a form of words
after the manner of the illustrious Greek philosopher
whom we have quoted, to the following effect, and in
the following order, viz. : circulatio circulationum omnia
circulatio.
The truth of these words, and of this thesis of varieties,
we shall now endeavour to make manifest, and, in doing
so, we shall confine ourselves, more especially, to that
aspect of the subject which finds its illustration in the
animal, and more especially, in the human economy.
Here we find that the principle of circulation is universally
operative, in all the processes which we denominate vital,
and that by, and through, it, the manifold operations of
building up, and taking down, of taking down, and
building up, of ministering to the wants of conscious
being, and, finally, of effecting the resolution of the
component corporeal parts into their inorganic elements.
In attempting to accomplish this large, and self-imposed,
task, we must confess our inability adequately to compass
it, or in any appreciable degree to exhaust it ; but we
flatter ourselves that we may, in our restricted efforts,
be at least, " aiding, and abetting," others in carrying
THE PHYSICAL LAW OF MATTER 161
on the work of investigation of the large collection of
already recorded observations and experimental data,
lying ready to hand and capable of affording what is
required for absolute proof, and general acceptance, in
the deduction, and formulation, of its theoretical "manners
and methods," while, to some extent, assisting the elabora-
tion of its practical benefits, in their application to the
wants of everyday medicine, and surgery.
The recording of the order and sequence of the various
parts of this attempt at somewhat widening the boundaries
of knowledge must, to a great extent, be left in the mean-
time irregular and arbitrary inasmuch as the materials of
the record represent the everyday mental collections of a
lifetime, together with roughly assorted scientific data which
have not been arranged, or elaborated, primarily, with a
view to publication, but rather with the view of affording
a means, whereby we could from time to time take stock
of the " manner, and matter," of our daily thoughts, and
beliefs, amid the work, and worry, of our everyday life.
Friends having advised the publication of these efforts
at scientific work, recurring and therefore, necessarily
scattered, and, for the most part, the carelessly written
records of broken studies, their advice has at last been
taken, in the hope that some parts, or fragments, of these
studies, at least, might resist the crucial tests of criticism.
We, moreover, feel constrained to submit ourselves to the
tests dictated by the requirements of special knowledge,
even in this specially unprepared fashion, believing that it
is better to know what is true in them, and wishing what
is untrue to be sifted out of them, so that, if there be
any grains of truth left, they can be made available for
what they are worth, both, as additions to abstract
science, " pure and simple," and as, not unneeded,
additions to the beneficent agencies of applied science.
Chronological sequence of production will, therefore, to some
extent, interfere with that strict continuity of treatment
and detail of subject which is so essential for the obtaining
of a complete " grasp " of the meaning and purport of
what we want to convey ; and this may lead to faults,
both of omission and commission, and to the occurrence
both of gaps, and repetitions.
162 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
With these introductory observations, we now proceed
to summarise, and to place the results of our observations,
and reflections, with all their original and acquired im-
perfections, before our contemporaries, apologising for the
omission of mention of our sources of knowledge, a work
which we have found impossible, inasmuch as, they, the
subjects of our remarks, consist of material first gathered
from the lips of revered teachers, and of colleagues in the
work of life, from information derived from text-books,
and accessible works of authority, from articles scat-
tered up and down the serial literature, and publications,
of the time, and from independent, and personal sources,
presenting themselves during the course of professional
life and work.
Returning from this introductory digression, we shall
resume the discussion of the subject of cc circulation."
We had, to some extent, pursued the subject with a view
to obtaining a firmer grasp of it in that department which
relates to the movement, or circulation, of plastic, or more
or less fluid, materials, within more or less well-defined
vessels and inter-spaces, such as are met with both in
animal and vegetable structures. We shall now, there-
fore, again take up in its deeper, and so to speak,
underlying aspects, more especially as related to such
subjects as nutrition, assimilation, disintegration, and
excretion, processes which largely make up the problems
of life and " organic activity," the cessation of which
constitutes death.
Circulation, in its more usual biological aspects, is charac-
terised by forward movement of material, or matter, in
contrast to backward movement, and is due to the opera-
tion of forces acting both from before and from behind,
as well as, it may be, to latent, or intrinsic, forces acting
from within. That being so, we perceive that nutrition is
made possible only through that forward, or onward,
movement, of the nutritive plasma propelled and regu-
lated, by these modes of force, in virtue of the continued,
and, in normal vital conditions, the regular replacement
of used up, disintegrated, or effete, matter, by fresh, or
nutritive matter; which process necessitates the continuous
onward, as distinguished from the backward, movement
THE PHYSICAL LAW OF MATTER 163
of the matter in question. In this process we see con-
currently in operation modes of force which we may
designate, mechanical, chemical, and physiological, or vital,
the result being the maintenance of the materio-dynamic
equipoise whereby the continuance of life is secured.
This process, moreover, is one and the same, in its mode of
operation, from that instant when the life of the organism
takes its origin, in the primary vital spermo-germ arrange-
ment of its primordial atoms, until the conditions of life
no longer permit of its continuance. In this process, or,
we had almost said, procession, one atom, or molecule, of
matter, follows another in regular order ; so that when
the first has become "worn" out in the process, the next in
the succession takes its place, with the ordered continuity
of unending circulation, or so long as the required vital
conditions continue in existence.
All this necessitates the constant onward movement of
the circulated matter, and does not permit of its return,
hence we must regard the processes alluded to as being
conducted on these lines, and we must be prepared to see
in our experimental investigation and study of them,
that "sequence of events" which must inevitably flow
from the practical working, or operation, of such physio-
logical factors. We must, therefore, from this circulatory
sequence and onward movement, also recognise the fact
that no self-pollution, or autotoxis, can be permitted, if the
operations involved are effected perfectly and that physio-
logical health, if they be so effected, must follow with
unerring certainty.
In other words, we see, in the operation of these pro-
cesses on the lines which we have attempted to explain,
that nature does not permit, in her untrammelled condition,
the pollution of the nutritive material which she is con-
veying to the living and working structures of the body,
by the effete materials resulting from the living and
working condition, of that body ; but, on the contrary,
that she provides that these latter, the effete, must be
" moved on" or onwards, by her vital police, or safeguards,
before she gives up the former, or nutritive. In this way
only is it possible for the dire results of autotoxis to be
averted, and the condition of health to be maintained.
164 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Hence we find that the processes of integration and
disintegration balance each other, in the highest and best
states of health ; the body weight being thus regularly
and steadily maintained amid all the disturbances of
everyday life.
In any and all departures from the normal level of
good health we may expect to find an interruption in
the regularity of the processes, and a corresponding inter-
ference with the continuity of the conditions on which
that health depends. It will, therefore, under such circum-
stances, be of the greatest value to us as the conservers
and restorers of health, if we bear this in mind, and do
our best to discover where, in the circulatory chain, the
first indication of strain is observable, in order to be able
scientifically to begin and continue our treatment, pre-
ventive, palliative, and curative.
For example, if we analyse the " sequence of events "
to be observed in the course of some well-defined disease,
or morbid entity, we shall perceive the relevancy of, and
the necessity for, the use of this advice. Diseases, there-
fore, such as a " common cold," or influenza, will afford
good examples for consideration on these lines, and they
will be found " dealt with " in the accompanying pages.
Haemal circulation carried on through elaborately
constructed vessels and by the operation of well-defined
forces is operative up to that point in the human body,
where tissue metabolism begins, and where the cerebro-
spinal blood circulation ends by depositing its nutritive
materials in the neuroglial matrix. At the latter point
begins another circulation, or system of circulations
purely nervine, or neural, and for the most part confined
within the precincts of the systemic nervous system, and
its containing membranes. This circulation, the systemic
nervine, is sui generis ', or, at any rate, very different from
the circulations which precede it, inasmuch as the textures
composing its circulatory apparatus are quite different, as
well as the fluids circulated.
The pabulum on which the nervous system is supported,
and from which it extracts its nourishment, is represented
by the amorphous and faintly organised material depo-
sited amid the fibro-cellular meshes of the neuroglial,
THE PHYSICAL LAW OF MATTER 165
basal, organised texture, and is extracted from that
situation by the dendrons of the nerve cells, or neurons,
and conveyed to the substance of the nerve structures
proper of these neurons, viz. to the cell body with its
proper plasmic contents, the nucleus with its special
contents, and the innermost neuronal structure, and the
nucleolus with its most special contents. The nerve cell
contents and the nuclear substance being continuous,
respectively, with the white substance of Schwann, and
the axis cylinder substance of the nerve fibre, initiate
and continue other two circulations, represented by these
two substances, along each axonal process, or axon ; the
two substances being fluid, or plastic, enough, to allow
of more or less freedom of onward movement, or
circulation.
These two central circulations are carried on through,
or along, continuous sheaths, or cases, enclosed in a
neurilemma composed of layer after layer of dense
fibrous tissue containing, within well-defined limits,
inter-spaces occupied by cerebro-spinal, or neural, lymph,
as distinguished from haemal lymph. These inter-
neurilemmar spaces, with their neural lymph contents,
represent at least other two circulations, continuous with,
and from, the sub-arachnoid and sub-dural spaces, respec-
tively. Thus, along every afferent, and efferent, nerve
fibre, from its origin to its terminal distribution, we have
a series of at least four separate and individual circu-
lations simultaneously in operation and requiring for
their maintenance an unbroken continuity of tubes and
an unfailing supply of fluids, and colloid materials, of
appropriate consistence, and physiological quality. An
axonal nerve fibre is, thus, a compound of at least four
tubes circulating fluids and substances of different
consistence, and qualities, along its intra-spaces, each
circulation differing from the other according to the
consistence of its material and the freedom from
obstacles to its onward progress, the two inner being
necessarily slow, but the two outer necessarily relatively
quick.
The circulations here outlined are carried on mainly
towards a free terminal surface, with the exception of
i66
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
that of the motor nerves, and it must necessarily follow
that the substances circulated have to find a means of
distal outlet, as backward progress, at least of the two
inner, is safeguarded, by appropriate means elsewhere
described.
H*
'W, I .-
M{
Fig. 62.— Section of epidermis from the human hand. Highly
magnified. (Ranvier.)
//, horny layer, consisting of s, superficial horny scales : sw, swollen-out horny cells ;
s.l, stratum lucidum ; M, rete mucosum or Malpighian layer, consisting of
p, prickle-cells, several rows deep ; and c, elongated cells forming a single stratum
near the corium. lhe granular cells of Langerhans, which he just below the
stratum lucidum, are not shown, n, part of a plexus of nerve-fibres in the
superficial layer of the cutis vera. From this plexus, fine varicose nerve-fibrils
may be traced passing up between the cells of the Malpighian layer.
Where then are we to look for the means of their
final disposal when they have become effete, and no
longer capable of retention within the body, without
the danger of pathogenesis ? The disposal of the neural
lymph, or the fluid, circulated by the two outer tubes
has been traced in some detail to the sweat glands (Fig.
15), and to excretion through the skin, and into the
sarcolemmar sheaths of the muscle fibres. Where then
THE PHYSICAL LAW OF MATTER 167
can the medullary, or white, substance of Schwann, be
traced to ? and where can the substance of the axis
cylinder be evacuated ? An answer to these last two
questions seems to us to be almost impossible, but never-
theless, we think that the importance of the subject
demands that we should do our utmost to trace its
progress, until either failure, or success, follows.
It is said that the white substance of Schwann ceases
to exist at a point some little distance from the nerve
terminals, and, if this be so, we must be prepared to
look for its elimination somewhere before the final
Fig. 63.— A, Two tactile cells in the deeper part of the human
epidermis. (Merkel.) B, Ending of nerves in tactile discs in
the pig's snout. (Ranvier.)
«, nerve-fibre ; m, terminal menisci or tactile disks ; e, ordinary epithelium-cell ;
a, altered epithelium-cell, to which the meniscus is applied.
distribution of these terminals. In doing so, however,
we fail to find any solution of continuity of its con-
taining membrane and, consequently, we must believe
that it finds its way out of its containing membrane at
the extremities of the nerve terminals, and so empties
them, that accounting for the above statement : this, we
think, it does amid, and as, the epidermal cells, and
keratinous debris, forming the cuticular layers overlying
the true skin; indeed, it might be said, without over-
stretching the " scientific imagination," to lend itself to
the formation of these layers, and to be finally shed as
epidermal scales (Fig. 62), with the overlying and inter-
penetrating horny matrix of keratinous, and connecting,
or cementing, material. To this goal also may be traced
1 68 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
its containing membrane, and perhaps to the sebaceous
glands, we may trace some of these materials, as well as,
it may be, the final disposal of the substance composing
the axis cylinder of the nerve fibrils with the broken-
down constituents of its containing tube, or wall.
The ubiquitous structures represented by the epidermal
covering of the cutaneous envelope, the epithelial and
endothelial linings of the hollow spaces of the body,
constitute the " scene," and afford the " theatre," wherein
the ultimate disposal of the materials used up by nervine
activity is effected, and where the separation and excretion
of the effete and toxic residuum of
these materials are carried out.
The process of separation, and
excretion, may be accomplished
through the circulatory agencies
belonging to the nervous system
itself, and, it may be, also by the
aid of other agencies, emanating
Fig. 64. — Part of the reti- c j i_ 1 • ^11 1
culum from the spinal from, and belonging to, the haemal
S3sSSL Mag" system. Thus, there may .be a
dual security provided for the
maintenance of cutaneous perspiration, and transpiration,
resulting from the co-existence of a nervine, and haemal,
sudoriferous feeding mechanism, connected with the
sweat glands, in virtue of which a state of cutaneous
circulatory equilibrium is made possible, and temperature
evenly sustained ; sweating may, therefore, be due to
one, or both, of these sources of supply acting alone,
or simultaneously, and, accordingly, the sweat may
somewhat alter in character and composition according
to which of the sources is the more active for the time
being. The profuse perspiration produced by active
physical exercise is somewhat different from that pro-
duced under states of mental excitement, the former
arising in hyperaemic conditions of the skin, and the
latter, it may be, in anaemic conditions of that texture ;
the opposite conditions of active physical exertion, and
extreme physical collapse, being thus characterised by
profuse action of the sudoriferous apparatus.
Sweat is, therefore, a product of nervine, or haemalr
THE PHYSICAL LAW OF MATTER 169
excretory activity, or both, and is, alike at all times, the
result of circulatory agency. Moreover, sweat represents
one of the final results of the manifold changes to which
the nutritive materials supplied to the body are subjected,
Fig. 65. — Section of the internal saphenous nerve (human), made
after being stained in osmic acid and subsequently hardened
in ALCOHOL. Drawn as seen under a very low magnifying power.
(E. A. S.)
Ep, epineurium, or general sheath of the nerve, consisting of connective tissue bundles
of variable size separated by cleft like areolae, which appear as a network of
clear lines, with here and there fat -cells ff, and blood-vessels v ; per, funiculus
enclosed in its lamellated connective tissue sheath (perineurium); end, interior
of funiculus, showing the cut ends of the medullated nerve-fibres, which are
imbedded in the connective tissue within the funiculus (endoneurium). The fat-
cells and the nerve-fibres are darkly stained by the osmic acid, but the connective
tissue of the nerve is only slightly stained.
in their passage from the outer world, to the outer world, and
affords one of the best examples of the adaptability of the
principles of circulation to the production and elucidation
of physiological phenomena, as they are displayed in the
life and working of the human body and of all living,
or organic, bodies.
EXTRACT XV.
ON THE NUTRITION, AND METABOLISM, OF THE
SYSTEMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM, OR SYSTEMIC NER-
VINE NUTRITION.
The theory of nutrition generally, but, more specially, the
theory of systemic nerve and muscle nutrition, must, we
feel, require revision on our part, in consequence of our
entertainment of the foregoing views. We, therefore, are
now impelled to attempt the task, and to put on record
some of the views on the subject, as related to the process
of nutrition that have presented themselves to us, from
time to time, as the progress of these studies allowed, or
suggested, and as the varied aspects of the particular
subject, pursued at the time, have presented themselves,
and novel views have consequently been obtained, as we
have been " carried along the streams " of exploration,
observation, and deduction, while holding aloft the " rush-
light " of our already acquired and immediately available
knowledge, to enable us to " determine our whereabouts "
amid our unfamiliar surroundings.
We have somewhere else expressed, if not fully stated,
our belief in the existence of a secondary digestion, as repre-
senting, constituting, or lying, at the foundation of
neuronal nutrition and development, and have stated that
the neuroglial matrix of amorphous, and more, or less,
developed, substance, deposited amid a feltage of fibro-
cellular foundation texture (Fig. 66), supplies the pabulum
which is, or has been, carried hither by the haemal
circulation, and which is osmotically imbibed and con-
verted, into neural protoplasm by the dendritic rootlet
SYSTEMIC NERVINE NUTRITION 171
economy of the neuronal organisms composing the great
neuronal commonwealth, or nerve cell union, which goes
to make up the systemic nervous system, as displayed in
man, and his more highly organised neighbours in " the
scale of being."
The pabulum thus supplied to the neuronal dendritic,
or secretory, processes, is absorbed and passed into the
cell body cavities with which they are related, where it is
converted into medullary substance, or enters the nuclear
body cavities to form the axis cylinder substance of the
various axons, or as a final contribution to the economy
of nervine nutrition, it supplies the molecular and
Fig. 66. — Two nerve-cells from the cortical grey matter of the
cerebellum. Magnified 260 diameters. (Kolliker.)
atomic wants, of the nucleolar bodies, which latter
disposition of the plasma in question, thus constitutes
the central and final act of nutritional and formative
material organisation, and represents the final, or con-
cluding, material contribution to the evolution of that
cryptic union of " mind, and matter," which has hitherto
defied " the best laid schemes " of the acutest intellects of
biologists, physicists, and metaphysicians, alike, to unravel,
or fully appreciate.
The nutritive systemic nervine plasma thus obtained
and disposed of is circulated in, or grows along jealously
insulated, and continuous, intra-spaces, to the confines of
the afferent, and efferent, nervatures, alike, or respectively,
where it terminates within, and in continuity with, the
structural elements of the skin, and muscles, as a
172 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
constituent part of the epidermic and sarcous tissues.
Reaching these neuronal limits, the erstwhile proper
nerve substance is finally disposed of, by a process of
organic shedding, determined by the respective, histo-
terminal agencies of the voluntary muscular, and cutaneous,
textures — the former eventuating, or spending itself, in
sarcous disc formation, and the latter in epidermic cell
formation, both of which in turn are still further utilised,
or disposed of, in a way specifically their own.
Accepting, as we do, the theory of the neuron, as being
most in accordance with our particular views of the
systemic nervous system, we would claim that, each
neuron feeds on, or is nourished by, the more or less
amorphous, or non-developed, elements of the neuroglial
matrix (see Fig. 66), in which it is rooted by its den-
dritic processes, by a process of osmotic selection, or
absorption, that the totality of these neurons is bound
up, systematised, organised, and co-ordinated, so as to
control the nerve traffic through the afferent and efferent
channels, of functional nervine molecular, charge, and
discharge, and the passage of nerve energy along the
axonal processes within their individual myeline sheaths,
and neurilemmar coverings ; and that a process of circu-
lation characterises the nutritive economy and nerve
force distribution throughout the entire systemic nervous
system. Therefore, throughout the whole process of
systemic nerve nutrition, circulation is operative, and
omnipresent, from its inception in the dendritic absorp-
tion of the neuroglial plasma, until that plasma is finally
disposed of by the nerve terminals, in skin, and muscle
development — the former manner of termination resulting
in contributing to the formation of the " outer skeleton,"
or skin, the latter, after supplying the fibral formative
material wants of muscle, exhausting itself in the pro-
duction of the synovial fluids, of tendon sheaths, and
joint cavities, and contributing to the growth, and
maintenance, of the inner, or "true skeleton," and render-
ing up its residual material to the bone marrow, and the
systemic lymph circulation, for final disposal.
The nutrient course of the systemic nerve plasma, as
thus outlined, is a very long and complex one, but yet
SYSTEMIC NERVINE NUTRITION 173
no exception to the universal rule that all nutritive pheno-
mena are due to circulation, and, therefore, conducted
along definite lines of circulatory spaces, by the operation
of definite circulatory forces, for definite nutritive pur-
poses, and definite eliminatory necessities.
In short, nutrition, neuro-sympathetic, and systemic,
conjointly constitutes the central, and terminal, or really
integrative, act, of the long series of circulatory disposals
and preparatory physical changes which characterise the
preparation of tissue pabulum for the operation of the
metabolic forces which control the chemico-physiological
phenomena of the nutritive process, and which has no
sooner been accomplished, than the inverse, or disinte-
grative, circulatory disposal, of that pabulum begins, and
pursues its course until its removal from the economy
is effected, and room made for fresh material — the round
of the changes thus outlined constituting that universal
system of organic circulation, of which the " circulation of
the blood " constitutes the dynamic centre.
The process of nutrition is, therefore, as continuous
and uninterrupted as that of circulation, and consists
in the maintaining of the continuity of organic structure,
by the substitutive replacement of the displaced particles,
in perpetual and unbroken succession, by, or in obedi-
ence to the operation of the metabolic laws of change,
and exchange and the physical laws of organic circulation.
As thus effected, the onward movement of the circu-
lated organic pabulum is uninterrupted by regurgitation,
or the possible admixture of the pure and impure or
the nutrient and effete elements, and hence, so long
as the physiological balance is maintained, a condition of
perfect, or physiologically-sound, health, must obtain, but
so soon as it ceases to be so maintained a pathological
state of health becomes the result.
EXTRACT XVI.
ON CIRCULATION, AND NUTRITION, OF, AND BY, THE
SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM.
Towards obtaining a wider and clearer view, of the
applicability of the principle of circulation to the explana-
tion of vital phenomena, as they are to be observed
thoughout the whole extent of the animal and vegetable
world, we would formulate the comprehensive generalisa-
tion, that all life, living action, or vital activity, including
nutrition, consists of the movements, or circulation, of vital-
ised matter, along definite lines determined by, and due to,
the definite movement, or circulation, of tissue proto-
plasm and vital energy. Thus, from the gross movements
and circulation of the raw alimentary material, to its final
atomic incorporative disposal in the process of tissue
nutrition, a continuous chain of circulatory acts obtains
which is not even broken when the last vital atomic inte-
grative act continues into, and terminates as, the first
atomic act of devitalisation and disintegration except that
the circulation of vital energy ceases to be able, or
becomes insufficient to maintain, living atomic cohesion,
and so allows to begin the disintegrative circulation, and
resolution of the devitalised matter into its elementary
constituents. Circulation, therefore, according to this
view, in its first half, or its nutritive course, in the higher
animal world, and, for that part of it, in the vegetable world
also, is carried out under the active integrative, and
"uphill," influence of vital energy, while in the second
half of its course, or after the organic "watershed" of
vital eminence has been passed, so to speak, and the play
ON CIRCULATION AND NUTRITION 175
of vital integrative and cohesive force, has been ex-
hausted, in its long struggle against the powers of inorganic
activities, and the natural analytic disposition inherent in
metamorphic matter, it is conducted, certainly along paths
still actively alive, but in accordance with the disinte-
grative, "downhill," or adynamic, condition, of dying, or
dead, matter, and shed through the external surface exits
of the organism in question, into the outer world, in
quantity exactly according with that of the original raw
material ingested.
This general process of nutritive circulation requires,
for the accomplishment of its purpose, the provision of a
" system " of circulatory facilities, or passages, amid the,
for the time being, existing matrix elements of the various
structures undergoing nutrition, along which the nutritive
pabulum can be conveyed, and from which it can be
selected, by anabolic attraction for incorporation with, and
integration by, the worn, and exhausted, tissues ; and we
claim that such a system is afforded by the endothelial
lining cells, with their connecting and continuing, fibrous
processes — of the capillary network of the blood-vessels,
from which the materials for nutrition are extravasated,
and from which they circulate into the remotest interstitial
spaces of the tissue matrix, and proper structural elements,
throughout the organism.
The process of extravasation, or exudation, or extraction,
here referred to, may be said to resemble what takes place
through the intestinal mucosa, and its overspreading, or
lining villi, the latter performing, in the process of ali-
mentary absorption, the same function as do the endothelial
cells lining the capillary blood vasculature, which pass their
absorbed plasma on to their process related cells , for meta-
bolic, or nutritive, use, much in the same way as the villi
of the intestinal wall pass on their absorbed chyle, to the
lacteals, and related mesenteric glands. Moreover, both
these examples of distributive circulation illustrate the
adaptation, of the same principles of circulation, to meet
very different organic ends, and to accomplish very different
physiological purposes, in the economy of sympathetically
controlled nutrition.
This view of the subject has already been referred to
176 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
when discussing the subject of systemic nervine nutrition,
but it seems still necessary further to elucidate it, in refer-
ence to the nutrition of the so-called non-nervous, or
sympathetically innervated textures generally. In studying
the economy of general, or sympathetic nervine nutrition,
as distinguished from particular, or systemic nervine nutri-
tion, we are impressed with the conviction that the pure,
or incoming nutritive material, must be circulated, or con-
veyed, to the textures to be nourished, along routes, or by
vessels, or inter-spaces separate and distinct from those
conveying away, or removing, the disintegrated, and effete,
or waste, products, of tissue tear and wear. Our convic-
tion, of the consistency and necessity, of such provision, is
based, mainly, on the non-existence, in the physiologically
healthy condition, of a state of toxicity throughout the
whole field of nutritive activity, and on the, consequently,
necessary patency of a complete system of eliminatory
agencies and organisms by which the escape of effete, and
toxic, materials, can be effected in one unbroken succession
along the lines of least resistance by efferent vasculatures,
so to speak ; moreover, it can only be thus, we think, that
such a vitally important function, as that of nutrition, is
possible, and that pathological conditions must accrue when
any departure from it ensues.
The lymph circulation, therefore, may be regarded as a
compound circulation, somewhat in the way we regard the
circulation of the blood, as being devisable into a systemic
and pulmonary circulation, or perhaps, more aptly, as we
regard these two circulations as being devisable, respectively,
into arterial and venous circulations joined, respectively,
by a capillary circulation. The afferent liquor sanguinis,
or nutritive lymph, circulation, may be compared with the
arterial circulation, the efferent, or effete, circulation, with
the venous circulation, and the uniting, or integrative,
textural circulation, with the uniting, and anastomosing,
capillary circulation. Thus, we see, by a continuation of
the application of the principle of circulation, along a proper
vasculature and system of inter-spaces, the method, and
manner, of the complex function of nutrition become
clearer, and more definite. Our contention being that the
solid structure of the body is made up of two kinds of
ON CIRCULATION AND NUTRITION 177
cells, according to the manner of innervation of its various
textures, called, respectively, neuro-sympathetic,and neuro-
systemic, according to which division of the nervous system
they belong. We therefore, further, feel warranted in
venturing the opinion, that these two systems of innerva-
tion being the producers, and circulators, of nerve force,
along definite lines, and through definite structural channels,
are likewise the distributing and circulating media of the
tissue protoplasm, or pabulum, along, and through, the
same channels, in virtue of their absolutely ubiquitous
inter-cellular and intra-cellular distribution, and continuity
of lumens, and texture. Thus, we are enabled to perceive
that each endothelial cell of the total capillary vasculature
becomes a means whereby the nutritive pabulum is removed
from the blood circulation and conveyed by its processes
of attachment and inter-communication to distant cells,
and groups of cells, and fibrous textures, and organs, by
direct continuity of histological development, and vital
oneness of organic structure, and function. We take it,
therefore, that the principle of circulation is still in opera-
tion, in effecting the conveyance of the nutritive plasma
from the blood, to the tissues, and that we must grant to
the cell and fibre elements involved, the possession of
miniature capillary channels, and energy, enough, albeit
nervine, to effect the required circulatory movements,
under the selecting and distributing supervision of the
sympathetic nerve economy, until the final act of tissue
nutritive assimilation is accomplished, and the integrity of
the tissue elements made good — all which is effected, on
lines calculated to secure purity of nutritive material, and
to obviate effete admixture, or auto-intoxication, in the
all-important process of nutrition.
Nutrition having been thus effected by cell, and fibre,
selection, circulation, and distribution, and the final meta-
bolic changes in the integrative disposal of the tissue plasma
having taken place, we may be prepared to find that the
integrated material, after a longer, or shorter, period of
textural detention, or, until tear, and wear, have done
their work, resumes, or continues, its course of circu-
latory movement, by being disintegrated, and shed, into
the rudimentary " effete lymph " inter-spaces of the
178 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
disintegrating tissues, where, uniting with that from kindred,
and neighbouring, inter-spaces, it finds its course facilitated
by the ultimate provision of a lymphatic vasculature, which
ultimately conducts it back to the blood stream to be finally
disposed of. Thus regarded, the processes of integration,
and disintegration, involved in the great process of nutri-
tion, are accomplished on lines altogether conducive to
atoxicity of nutritive material, and to unmixed removal of
effete residuum.
Living cell and fibre, or process, thus manipulate, and
finally dispose of, the nutritive pabulum, or plasma, while
a series of inter-spaces and a developed vasculature suffice
for the conveyance of the effete material, resulting from
the disintegration of tissue, albeit, this vasculature is also
possessed of a series of intercalated glandular organisms
whereby its effete contents can be returned into the blood,
with their composition so altered that their toxic qualities
are no longer dangerous, or at least that they can be toler-
ated until removed by the provided excretory organs,
all which accentuates once more the truth of our thesis :
circulatio circulationum omnia circulatio.
Nutrition, therefore, thus viewed, becomes a process of
chemico-mechanical preparation of alimentary materials,
of their circulation, along definite vessels, spaces, and inter-
spaces, to the tissues to be nourished, of their incorporation,
and assimilation, by these tissues, and of their subsequent
disintegration, and removal, through a series of succeeding
inter-spaces and spaces, into a specially provided vascula-
ture, for atoxic disposal in the blood circulation, from
which they came, or by direct excretion. It thus becomes
apparent that nutrition, as well as innervation, within a
dually innervated body, must be regarded as a dually
performed operation inasmuch as the nutritive plasma is
taken up and distributed, by the sympathetic, and systemic,
nervous systems, respectively, to their several "spheres of
influence," or innervation. It must, therefore, further be
recognised that nutrition is effected entirely through the
instrumentality of nervine dynamic agency, whether in the
sphere of sympathetic, or systemic, nerve influence, and
that the nutritive plasma is selected, either by sympathetic,
or systemic, nerve cells, located, respectively, in the endo-
ON CIRCULATION AND NUTRITION 179
thelial linings of the blood vasculature, and sympathetic
ganglia, and the nerve cells proper of the systemic nervous
system, and conveyed by nutritive circulation, along
successive histological processes, or lines, and linked cells,
to every texture requiring nutritional supplies. From this
it follows, that every cell must belong to one, or other, of
the nervous systems, and that, consequently, all nutritive
processes are the work of, one, or the other, system, hence
nutrition is a dually performed function, according to the
dual division of all cells, into, sympathetic, and systemic,
respectively. Thus, the sympathetic, nourishes, directly
from the blood, every texture of the body, save those
dependent on the systemic nervous system, besides laying
down in the matrix of the neuroglial substance of the
systemic nervous system, the " prepared raw material," or
pabulum for the nutrition of that system, while the
systemic nervous system nourishes, in like manner, every
texture directly continuous with itself, on both its afferent,
and efferent aspects.
The process of nutrition being, thus, effected through
cell agency, along communicating histological processes, or
connective fibres, porous enough to permit of plasmic
circulation within them, and surrounded by a, protective,
and insulating, fluid, or lymph, containing "normal saline,"
or its equivalent, in both its sympathetic, and systemic,
varieties, a continually forward, and unmixed, distribution,,
of nutritive material is obtained which obviates the oc-
currence of regurgitation and consequent autotoxis, and
eventuates in the metabolic phenomena constituting the
act of nutrition, and including both integration, and dis-
integration.
The act of nutrition varies in extent, with the needs of
the tissue, or unit of texture, undergoing nutrition, and is
essentially one of supplying tissue molecular, or atomic,
wants, due to impaired material continuity, from the effects
of functional, or materio-dynamic, tear and wear, and the
natural katabolic denudation ever present in all organised,
as well as unorganised, substances.
Nutrition, thus, constitutes the central, and ultimate,
vital distribution, arid incorporation, of the alimentary
materials supplied for the body's upkeep — waste, and
180 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
decay, following, and completing, the cycle of changes under-
gone by every particle of those materials, in their passage
from the inorganic, to the inorganic world, through the
organic intricacies of that body. All the chemico-physio-
logical processes leading up to, and all the chemico-physio-
logical processes following on, this act, but consist of a
material preparation for, and a removal of material results
from, the scene of that transcendental metabolic vital
chemistry, whose purpose is, the maintenance of life, and
health, with all that is included therein ; and comprise, the
whole physiological phenomena displayed, in the transit of
dietetic articles through the body, their resolution into its
organic elements, and their final restitution, as inorganic
elements, to mother earth.
The vital chemistry involved in the process of nutrition
represents the progress, and culmination, of all the vital
preparatory processes, preceding, and constituting it, and
the advent and progress of the processes of devitalisation,
and decay, succeeding it, during which are displayed,
phenomena not less marvellous and wonderful than
those involved in the origin of individual life forms, or
the working out of organic perfection^ throughout the
universe.
As the " means to the end " — the accomplishment of
nutrition — it must not be forgotten that the process is only
possible, when a complete means of conveyance, as well as,
preparation, of nutritive materials, is provided, by a
continuous canalling of the whole organism, or body, in
virtue of which, and vital dynamics, a circulation, is main-
tained, of such a complete character, that a way is found to
every atomic vacant space, and a fresh atom supplied, by
which the atomic continuity of every texture is sustained,
and residual materials moved on. From this it becomes
obvious that, any departure from a strictly physiological
state, in either material, or working, must be followed
inevitably by a pathological result, in proportion to the
extent, and continuance, of the pathological factors,
the removal of which, when it does occur, must, therefore,
be sought at the earliest possible moment, by a scientific
appreciation of the conditions involved, and the most
immediate use of scientifically indicated means.
ON CIRCULATION AND NUTRITION 181
In conclusion, nutrition may, strictly speaking, and in a
word, be described as, the central circulatory act of disposal,
in the cycle of circulatory acts of disposal of the elaborated
organic plasma, or protoplasm, in its atomic units, to suit
the atomic needs of the tissues, and to maintain their
functional powers at a normal level, while, simultaneously,
clearing them from the presence of their effete, and hence
toxic, residual materials : if therefore, nutrition be properly
effected, it must follow, that every other vital process must
be performed in accordance with the claims of physiological
health.
EXTRACT XVII.
ON THE OCCURRENCE OF VACUA IN THE ORGANIC,
OR METABOLIC, WORK OF THE HUMAN BODY,
AND ON "SUCTION" EVACUATION, AND GRAVI-
TATION, IN RELATION THERETO, OR THE DYNA-
MICS OF CIRCULATION.
The existence of an absolute vacuum is an impossibility,
in the everyday working of the human, and every other
organic, body, and is only thinkable as a scientific curiosity,
the existence, however, of comparative vacua throughout
nature, is not only thinkable, but constantly observable in
that portion of it within our reach.
Thus, the earliest indications in the human infant of its
power of self-existence are the creation, by reflex neuro-
muscular effort, of an uncountable multitude of vacua, in
its hitherto unopened, or pseudo-impervious, pulmonary
parenchyma, in virtue of which an inrush of atmospheric
air commences the life-long process of breathing, with all
that is dependent thereon of functional and material
change and organic work — next to death, this is one of
the most marvellous, and important, changes, effected in
the history of fceto-infantile evolution, marking, as it
does, the beginning of separate and independent existence,
the commencement of individual life, and the perpetuation
of the species.
The vacua created here, in embryonically prepared
structures, are effective, till the termination of the indi-
vidual existence, and by rhythmic repetitions of the original
respiratory movement, in maintaining the union between
the body, and what constitutes the hitherto inexplicable
THE DYNAMICS OF CIRCULATION 183
entity called the individual life, or the vital principle, the
coming and going of which are so absolutely, and visibly,
real, but at the same time intangible, and impressing the
human intellect with a faith in the existence of a necessary,
though hidden, communion, and continuity, between the
seen and tangible and the unseen and intangible ; and
begetting a belief in the reality of the existence of "things
not seen." Another vacuum formed by the uneducated
and but instinctively informed infant consists in the
shaping of its oral organs into the form of a " sucker," the
working of whose vacua! principle is so perfect as to secure
the means of its material sustenance and growth and the
maintenance of that community of existence and feeling
between it and the maternal organism so essential in its
then helpless manner of life. Who is there, it may here
be asked, who cannot see in this co-existence and inter-
dependence, the greatest factor, not only in securing a
proper receptacle for the indwelling of the vital principle,
but the greatest educative power and so-called hereditary
influence which can be brought to bear in the formation of
future character, and the shaping of destiny, in the gener-
ations which have lived, and those which are to live ?
The oral vacuum with which independent existence
begins, continues to be formed, in obedience to the law
of organic demand, dictated by sensations of hunger
and thirst, and has to be occupied, or filled, as long as life
continues by its proclaiming the material needs of the
body, and doing its best to satisfy them so long, as these
are supplied by the outer world in quantity and of
quality, suitable for its purpose. Suction literal, or modi-
fied is the prime moving factor in all such processes of
vacuum formation, and is accomplished by appropriate
structural disposition of nerves, muscles, and subsidiary
tissue elements. Thus, the infantile oral vacuum into
which the maternal mammary apex is inserted secures by
suction, or the creation of repeated vacua, the passage of
the mammary fluid into the mouth, and alimentary canal,
and the nutritive economy of the infantile organism — a
process which, of course, necessitates the existence of a
previously prepared series of open spaces, or a vasculature,
affording the required vacual facilities.
184 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
A pre-natal histological arrangement of the embryonic,
and foetal, structures, has been effected which only
requires the advent of independent existence to be turned
to account to secure the subsequent continuance of life,
on the altered post-natal plan, and this consists — like the
launching of a ship into its future watery element — of the
opening of hitherto closed sluices and the letting in of the
gases, fluids, and solids, of self-sustainment.
After this process of sluice opening and the inaugura-
tion of independent existence, a connected, and continual,
series of circulations is evolved, or established and per-
petuated which disposes of the alimentary materials, on
the principle of continuous evacuation and renewal, or
replacement, by the formation of vacua, and vacuoles, and
the refilment of them by fresh materials — these vacua, and
vacuoles, acting as so many suckers, in the economy of the
nutritional disposal of tissue pabulum, on the oft-quoted,
and conveniently available, principle, that " nature abhors
a vacuum."
The modes of force in use in the accomplishment
of these circulatory phenomena are neuro-muscular, or
dynamic, action, capillary attraction, and chemical affinity,
initiated, and sustained, by vitality, or life ; the circulatory
ways, or textural inter-spaces along which the fresh organic
plasma, and the effete, or waste tissue products, are
conveyed, being organised vessels, tissue porosities and
molecular vacuoles, or atomic voids. Activity of the
organism and the exercise of the nutritional machinery,
cause molecular displacement, or waste of organised
texture, or evacuation of the molecular spaces of these,
with the consequent creation of molecular vacuoles which,
thereafter, " cry out for," and attract, or " suck in," the
required molecules of fresh plasma — which process keeps
repeating itself, as long as the conditions of life are
effectively sustained.
From these statements we are warranted in concluding
that all vital processes consist of an unbroken graduated
series of circulatory movements along definite organic
channels varying in available circulatory capacity from the
primary alimentary canal, to the ultimate atomic, or mole-
cular, vacuole, and from the ultimate atomic, or molecular,
THE DYNAMICS OF CIRCULATION 185
vacuole, to the primary alimentary canal and the various
other excretionary orifices of the body generally.
All these vital circulatory phenomena are thus, to a
great extent, antagonistic to the great law of gravitation,
and it is only when pathological conditions are evolved,
that that law is able to reassert, or manifest, its powers, in
opposition to those of vitality, and health ; therefore it is
only on the complete arrest of vitality, or at death, that that
law resumes a complete sway over organised matter.
In this connection, however, it may be pointed out, as
an indispensable condition of life and health, that the
complete and effective removal of effete, or worn-out,
organic material, is absolutely essential, and that that
condition is provided by the law of gravitation, in that
it immediately removes organic debris as it is detached
from, or ejected by, the evacuant machinery of the body.
Moreover, we are further warranted in concluding that
thus, the law of gravitation is providing a vis a frontey
which is effective in securing the necessary external void,
or voids, for persistent forward suction and evacuation
and the maintenance of a continuous intra-corporeal
circulation, masticatory, digestive, sanguineous, nutritive,
and excretional, with the many connecting and subsidiary
circulations, making up the great organic circulatory
whole. Organic opposition and antagonism to the law
of gravitation ultimately end, in entire inorganic acquies-
cence in the inexorable requirements of that law, and
what has, for a shorter, or longer, period, been in active
organisation and functional use becomes reduced to its
original inorganic elements, in which it may again assume,
under the influence of other organic forces, another term
of organic existence ; and so the great problems of life
and death are continually being solved in the experiences
of, at any rate, the surface layers of the earth's crust — a
conclusion which witnesses once more to the truth of our
expression and contention : circulatio circulationum omnia
circulation and that the whole universe is in a state of
flux, and that nothing is at rest, really, whatever it may
be, relatively.
Making a somewhat larger generalisation, on these
lines, we feel, in conclusion, warranted in stating, that life
i86 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
consists in the temporary arrest of the complete reign of
gravitation and inorganic laws by the whilom erection of
an organic barrier^ by, or in, virtue of vital energy,
operating through formative impulse, along definite lines
of organic accretion, to living organisms — such living
organisms being ultimately overtaken and subdued by
the "all-prevailing" inorganic laws, but not, as a rule,
before they have secured their survival, and the perpetua-
tion of life, by transferring that life, in sufficient proportion,
to maintain an effective resistance, in the perpetual strife
of organic, and inorganic forces, and to secure the con-
tinuous existence of life, active intelligence, moral energy and
purpose, and future destiny.
The principle of the accelerative influence of the
vacuum, and vacuole, in the economy of circulation
throughout the body, seems to us to find employment
in the phenomena of muscular action. Thus, muscular
contraction, as displayed by individual muscle fibres, is
rhythmic, i.e. rest, and contraction, alternate with each
other, the rest allowing the muscle fibre to recover itself,
both as regards substance and energy, and the contraction
displacing both substance and energy along the lines of
least resistance, each contraction, and period of rest,
constituting the two halves of a whole operation, which,
repeated, and repeated, make up the life experience of
every muscle fibre, striped, and unstriped. To use a
familiar simile, we might compare the contraction of a
striped muscle fibre to the reduction of a fully extended
accordion, or concertina, to its ordinary proportions, or
what it is in a state of rest, by the withdrawal of impedi-
ments to its resumption of that position, or by the
application, it may be, of a compressing force. During
this change the interior of the instrument is emptied of
contained air, and collapse of it is the consequence. In
the case of contraction of a muscle fibre due to the effect
of nerve energy on the contractile substance of the fibre,
the intra-fibril contents are, or must be, more or less,
displaced, according to the intensity of the determining
influence, with the result, that the fibre, on the re-attain-
ment of its normal proportions, must give rise within
itself to the formation of a series of discal vacuoles
THE DYNAMICS OF CIRCULATION 187
proportioned to the extent of the contraction. What
then must occur to rectify the disturbed balance of flbral
material occupancy which must here be regarded as a
nutritive requirement, and the satisfaction of which is
essential, if the phenomenon of contraction, or muscle
work, is to continue ? Clearly the filling of the discal
vacuoles by suitable material for the influence of nerve
energy to be felt, and the phenomena of muscular con-
traction to be renewed. Where then can that suitable
material be derived from ? In our opinion it is derived
from the nerve terminal plates, or fibrils, which are
communicated to every sarcous disc, and through which
are conveyed from the central nervous system, the
material necessary for muscle nutrition and regeneration.
Thus, the neuro-musculature is, one, and indivisible, self-
supporting, and only inter-penetrated, and held in proper
histological position, by the sympathetically innervated
interstitial elements. No doubt it is impossible to
eliminate the many important inter-dependencies, material,
and functional, of the two nervous systems, in their great
conjoint work, of running the organic machinery of the
body, but it is obvious, that while there is reciprocity in
every possible manner, there is a distinct^ as distinguished
from a conjoint, adaptation, to perform certain specific
work, organic, and functional ; the recognition of which
is absolutely necessary, if we are to be possessed of what
is entitled to the name " a scientific knowledge of the
subject "—muscle disc plasma is thus derived from nerve
plasma which, in turn, is derived from nerve cell selection
from the matrix of the neuroglia which, in turn, is
derived from the blood plasma, the product of the
primary alimentary materials, the ingestion of which con-
stitutes the great necessity of life.
Belief in these statements, entails belief in the existence
of powers of circulation, by structures which have hitherto
been tacitly regarded as solid, or homogeneous, and
incapable of allowing the passage of material along their
constituent flbral elements. Circulation of material and
energy alike, as we have elsewhere endeavoured to prove,
is a root property, or foundation, condition, of all matter,
whether inorganic, or organic, and must be accepted as
1 88 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
axiomatic. It, therefore, follows, that the phenomena
here referred to are no exception to the rule, and that
circulation takes place, along the lines of least resistance,
which, here, are clearly what we have imperfectly stated.
Circulation of matter, in its organised form, we, there-
fore, regard as the result, primarily, of gravitation, inasmuch
as the first void space, or vacuole, is created by the exit, or
detachment, from the substance, or texture, in which
circulation becomes established, by the attractive influence
of gravitation after which the void, or vacuole, becomes
re-occupied, in virtue of the operation of this vis a fronte,
as well as, by the help of whatever vis a tergo may be
available, or inherent, in the particular structural circum-
stances. Gravitation plus the operation of vital energy,
which we claim to be equal to nerve, allied with physical,
chemical, energy, or life, and other modes of physiolo-
gical force, or attraction, constitute the causes of circu-
lation in a living organism ; this circulation being effected
along the lines of least resistance within that organism, it
follows that the life of that organism will be maintained,
as long as these forces are capable of propelling the
required organic pabulum along these lines. From this
likewise follows that the great desiderata, scientific, and
practical, are the securing of the effective operation of these
forces, and the maintaining of a free passage along these
lines, for the distribution of nutritive pabulum, and the
elimination of effete matter.
Nutrition, as considered in the light of these views,
becomes the central act of the circulatory work of the
organic body, or the central link of the great chain of
vital intra-organic distribution and structural integration
of tissue plasma on the one hand, and the disintegra-
tion and re-collection of the effete tissue material, or waste,
on the other. It must, therefore, be effected where the
tissue plasma has reached the atomic, or molecular, stage,
of distributive division, where the final units of that
plasma fit into the atomic voids, or vacuoles, of the tissue
fabric, and when, if there is any rest for the circulating
material, it might be conceived that it is here attained.
This conception, however, would be found to be a miscon-
ception, inasmuch, as this is, only, the longest, or the shortest,
THE DYNAMICS OF CIRCULATION 189
day in the organic time cycle, and must, therefore, be
reckoned, as of the same duration, as those immediately
before, and after. The rate of the circulation of the
structural elements, for the time being, therefore, of any
living structure, at any instant of time, must be deter-
mined by the rate of circulation of the atoms, or molecules,
composing them, and, consequently, by the consistence
and relative mobility of these, for the time being.
Nutrition, being the central disposition of the tissue
plasma within the structural elements of the organism,
is effected by the resident organic forces operating under
physiological impulse, resident in, or emanating from, the
living tissues, and supplied from resident nervine sources,
and is, thus, a thing, not primarily effected by central
or systemic nervine influence, but by the sympathetic
nervature, it may be, of course, after drawing on the
resources of the central nervous system — nutrition is,
therefore, an entirely sympathetic nerve operation, so far
as administration, so to speak, is concerned, and hence,
so far as we can see, it is not due to the existence of
any particular central systemic nerve mechanism, or trophic
nervature, or centre.
The foregoing applies to the textures and viscera in-
nervated by the sympathetic nervous system, and, more
or less, to those dependent for innervation on a combina-
tion of the two nervatures ; while the nutrition of striped
muscle, wherever situated, must be regarded as entirely
effected by systemic nervine agency, through neuronal,
absorption, conversion, and utilisation, of neuroglial
plasma, or material, and axonal conveyance of it to the
muscle " end plates," and its final fibril distribution to the
sarcous, or muscle discs. The nutrition of the interstitial
muscle substance, being derived from, or effected by, the
blood (Fig. 67), under sympathetic nervine influence,
is not affected, except indirectly, by systemic nervine
conditions, hence the occurrence of such affections, as
pseudo-hypertrophic paralysis in which the one element
of muscle disappears, while the other remains, at least,
for a time — the systemically innervated and nourished
representing the former, the sympathetically innervated,
the latter.
190
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Functional activity of the muscular tissues is always
necessary to maintain their nutrition, while disuse entails
atrophy of their sarcous element, and finally of their
interstitial element also, the lapsed raison d'etre of the
existence of the proper muscular elements ultimately
leading to their entire disappearance — which state is
Fig. 67.— Capillary vessels of muscle. Moderately magnified. (E. A. S.)
represented by that singularly impressive disease known
as myopathy — the subject of which ultimately becomes
literally "a living skeleton," bereft of every texture
dependent on systemic innervation and nutrition, and a
monument of sympathetically innervated and supported
organisation, in which, the once presiding psychic energy
is pent up in helpless solitude and isolation, amid the
decaying, and ultimately ruinous, neuronal remains, of
the cerebral and higher systemic centres.
EXTRACT XVIII. a.
ON SECRETION, AND EXCRETION— SO CALLED
SECRETION.
Secretion, as a word, or scientific term, signifies a separa-
tion from the blood of a fluid, meant for a physiological
use, or for excretion, as effete, or noxious, and hence is
applied to the functional work of a series of anatomical
structures called glands — ducted, and unducted, or ductless.
The view has hitherto been prevalently held, that the
material constituting the secretion was derived from the
blood directly, through the instrumentality of certain
secretory cells possessed by these glands, and this view
we are not about to dispute, further than that it should
be amplified, and should be made to include another
source of supply, viz. the nervine. Our reason, for
advancing this heterodox opinion is derived from a
survey of the circulatory and structural elements entering
into the histological composition of every gland, whose
circulatory contents are necessarily physiologically affected
by the specific secretory mechanism of those glands, from
their entry into, till their exit from, them. Circulation
within a gland, according to the results of our investi-
gation of the subject, is three-fold, in accordance with
the number of vasculatures histologically observable
therein, i.e. it consists of a blood circulation, a lymphatic
circulation, and a nervine circulation, the half of the first,,
and the last, of these, being afferent, and the remaining
half of the first, and the second, efferent.
From this, we may conclude that the blood, and the
nervine circulations, are alone engaged in contributing
192 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the elements of which the secreted fluid is composed,
and that the lymphatic circulation is concerned merely
in conveying, or removing, the results of the gland
tissue waste, proceeding from the functional activity
of the gland structure proper. If this be so, and we are
unable to conclude otherwise, we see, in every secretion,
the results both of blood and neural fluid disposal, some
of which must be regarded, as supplying materials for
further functional purposes in the economy, and some,
as removing from these circulations, for hygienic reasons,
materials whose continued presence there has become a
menace to health, and whose removal has been thereby
a physiological necessity.
Secretions of both descriptions may be cited, in order
to illustrate the truth of these remarks — thus, as types
of secretions whose value consists in aiding the vital
working of the body, we select first the ductless glands,
which secrete materials destined to continue in, and to
affect the physiological working of the blood, and second
the kidneys and sweat glands whose office it is to
separate, and to eliminate, materials altogether effete,
and exhausted of further functional usefulness. Of the
mixed class of secretions, we would cite third those
formed along, and connected with, the lumen of the
alimentary canal, whose chemico-physical powers, as
digestive agents, are still utilised for great physiological
purposes, and whose re-absorption in, and amongst, the
digested pabulum, in a consequently modified form, is
again effected.
In regarding the ductless glands as great agents in
the elaboration and vivifying of the blood plasma proper,
we think we perceive a great meaning in the expression,
and realise that a ductless state of those glands is not
only consistent with, but a necessary structural condition
for, enabling them to retain, and pass on, in the blood
circulation proper, the entire results of their functional
activity unaffected by admixture with adynamic, or
noxious, substances, and physiologically capable of meet-
ing the material and dynamic necessities of nutrition,
throughout the organism.
Secretion, therefore, becomes a function of a most
ON SECRETION AND EXCRETION 193
varied character, in the economy of vital integration
and disintegration, and employs an array of organic
structures, and devices, of the most elaborate, and
cunning design, whose influence in securing the health,
and physiological working, of the whole organism, it is
impossible to overestimate. It is concerned in, and at,
every stage of alimentation, nutrition and excretion,
assisting in the performance of every physiological stage
of the materio-vital work of the economy, selecting, and
passing on, the elements of nutrition and separating
and eliminating the elements of decay, thus maintaining
the balance in equal poise of tissue integration and
disintegration.
Every cell wall and nuclear sac thus becomes, to
all intents and purposes, a gland, whose function it is,
by osmosis, to convey, or pass through it, the currency
of nutritive plasma and the used up elements of its
contained structures. On the balance, therefore, of
their individual and communal functional performances,
depends the condition of the body, as to the incidence
of health, and disease, and the amount both of physical,
and mental comfort and happiness enjoyed by the
individual being.
Secretion, as a physiological function, must, therefore,
be followed by circulatory disposal and utilisation and
by structural integration of the secreted fluid, or its
excretion, and it must be continually borne in mind
that rectification of this regime, when faulty, becomes
the first duty of the members of the healing art ; its
close study and appreciation must, consequently, be
regarded as one of the foundation qualifying duties of
each and all of them — if they are scientifically to apply
the principles of therapeutics, and surgery.
Excretion, as a physiological term and process, has a
much more restricted meaning than secretion, being
applicable only to the final acts of material circulatory
disposal, in the economy of nutrition, and embraces the
eliminatory functional acts of the bowel, kidneys, skin
and lungs.
Excretion is concerned entirely with the disposal of
the egesta, and its scope, when healthy, entirely accords
i94 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
with the quantity of materials ingested, the egesta and
ingesta, necessarily balancing each other in gross quantity,
although varying in state of chemical and physical com-
bination, the difference between them, in composition,
and dynamic qualities, being represented in terms of
the production and expenditure of vital energy and
the maintenance of life.
As physiological terms, secretion and excretion apply,
in great measure, to the initial and terminal extremities
of the process of nutrition, and are due to, or consist
of, osmosis through gland, and every other form of cell
wall, of the nutritive plasma, on the one hand, and of
effete structural substance, on the other, hence the
necessity why they should exactly balance each other, in
order that the material status quo and the dynamic
equipoise should be maintained in undisturbed, and
finely adjusted proportions.
It becomes evident from this that the initial departure
from health dates, or may date, back to the first indi-
cation of disturbance in the process of nutrition, or in
the phenomena of integration and disintegration, locally,
or generally ; or, in short, to derangement of metabolism
in its most intimate nature, as lying at the foundation
of all life, or vitality.
Secretion and excretion, as physiological terms, applic-
able in a description of the metabolic phenomena of living
structure, seem to us to require modification, resetting,
or substitution — thus, the final act, or phenomenon of
nutrition, consists in, or of, the secretion of plasma, by,
or rather, the secreting, or " hiding " of plasma in the
molecular interstices of the histological elements known
as the tissues. Living structure, we would, therefore,
regard as the culminating, or final, result of vital con-
struction, preceded by preparatory physical change, and
followed by destructive re-arrangement, or katabolism, of
its elements, in rhythmic order, and sequence — its actual
component parts, for the time being, consisting of its
own proper, or intrinsic, chemico-physiological constituents,
or elements, in a state of stable, or loose, arrangement,
and cohesion, thus exemplifying in every degree, the rate
and manner of the vital physico-chemical circulation and
ON SECRETION AND EXCRETION 195
living textural endurance, skeletal resistance and tissue
disintegration.
Secretion consists, essentially, of the endosmotic dis-
posal of certain elements of haemal and neural lymph,
or plasma, while, in like manner, excretion consists in the
exosmotic disposal of these elements, constituting the
living tissues of the body, the combined operations being
effected by one continuous process of osmosis, through
the cells and cell processes, or fibres — each fibre being,
therefore, a nutritive plasma vessel and nutritive material
distributor.
A full understanding of these phenomena, thus, involves
a complete appreciation of the whole process of nutrition,
or metabolism, in all its phases, material and dynamic,
integrative and disintegrative, synthetic and analytic.
Occurring simultaneously with the phenomena of meta-
bolic conveyance and disposal are the phenomena of
chemico-physiological arrangement of the atomic elements
of the tissue plasma, in accordance with the molecular
affinities, constitution and necessities of the various
tissues, or structural developments, of the body, and,
therefore, the rounding off and the inclusion of the
complete processes of nutrition and the chemico-physics
of life.
The terms constituting the terminology and phrase-
ology of metabolism, introduced as its manner of working
has become understood, as the literature of the subject
has evolved itself, and its essence has become scientifically
embraced in the sum of knowledge, seem to us now to
offer the desired opportunity for re-moulding, in accordance
with the requirements of modern scientific progress, a
physiological terminology, which is in danger of becoming
obsolete, and no longer capable of exact disposal in the
structure of the language of research and accepted truth.
While we thus call attention to the growing want of
a scientific terminology, in proportion to, and in keeping
with, the advance made by truth, we would, at the same
time, sound a note of warning, that the old terms must
not be parted with, without the general assent of all those
engaged in the work of teaching the accepted truth, lest
the danger of losing a complete command of the old,
196 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
before a proper understanding of the power and manner
of employment of the new has to be met. The historical
evolution of the groundwork of science generally, as well
as of physiology in particular, has been slow and, to some
extent, fitful and halting, but it has been wonderfully
consistent and conservative, so that we may believe that
any studied effort to amend and expedite progress here
will be followed by the supply of a " felt want" and that
it will maintain the continuity of the evolution of the
terminology, and phraseology of a subject which lies at
the very- foundation of a department of physiological
knowledge., which, itself, is now so extensive as to
underlie much of the adjoining special sciences of
anatomy and pathology, and to pervade the texture of
the general subject of biology, which may be said to
include the whole of animated nature.
While thus calling attention to the necessity of amend-
ing the manner of use of the terms secretion and
excretion, we forbear offering, in the meantime, any
suggestion as to their modification, substitution, or
abrogation, having personally a great veneration for
them, begotten of the great services they have fulfilled
in our everyday life and work, and our appreciation
of the difficulties involved in "changing the fashion,"
and clothing anew "subjects of thought" which have
passed current during the great advances characterising
the recent progress of physiological, pathological, and
chemical knowledge, and experience.
Bound up with the terms secretion and excretion
is a clue to the origin and derivation of the earliest
periods of their growth and evolution leading back
to a period when the vernacular tongue was more in
use, in the expression of scientific facts, and the appli-
cation of a knowledge of those facts to the everyday
requirements of mankind. From which we feel warranted
in concluding that that clue is made up of a compound
thread emanating from both sacred and secular sources,
the skeins of which have been gradually lost, as the
divorce between religion and science took place, and
the thread, at last, " made up " of the solitary fibre of
science. In this divorce, the " secret," of the rapid
ON SECRETION AND EXCRETION 197
advance of science and the comparative non-progression
of religion is to be found, and the reasons for much
of their mutual distrust and antagonism, discovered ;
as well as the necessity for their again uniting their
efforts in applying the practical advantages, to be obtained
from their combined use, in the constantly recurring
vicissitudes marking the life and experience of man.
Secrets are no longer necessary to the progress of science;
indeed they constitute the problems in the elucidation
of which its best efforts are spent, and, the wider, and
fuller they become known to humanity, the quicker
will be the progress of civilisation, and the ameliora-
tion of the lot, of man. Secretion, therefore, appears
somewhat of an anachronism in this period of the world's
history, and might be amended, on the lines hinted at
above, with advantage to the interests of scientific
progress and the advance of exact knowledge — if, how-
ever, it be found possible, or best, to retain it without
detriment to progress, scientific, and literary, we shall
be prepared to cherish it, as its importance demands
and deserves.
EXTRACT XVIII.b.
EXCRETION.
It may be said, in its widest sense, that excretion repre-
sents the return, into the "outer world," of the residual
products of the raw materials of the food and drink
taken into the body, of the unutilised type — solid and
liquid, of the solid, and liquid results of waste and
disintegration, and of the gaseous elements, or results,
of chemical interchange, which have not entered into,
or which have been released from, solid and liquid,
combination, or association. Typically its forms consist
of the alvine, the renal, the cutaneous and the pulmonary,
and they may be grouped around two great nerve
areas and two great lymph systems, viz. the sympathetic,
and the systemic nervous systems, and the haemal, and
neural lymph systems, respectively. The kidneys may
be said to excrete, mainly, from the sympathetic nervous
system, or area, the residual haemal lymph ; the skin,
in like manner, the peripheral systemic, and the sympa-
thetic, neural lymph — that of the systemic motor area
finding its way into the haemal excepted — and the bowel,
an admixture of both systems ; while the lungs give off,
the great proportion of the effete gaseous material, the
skin and bowel, also contributing. It will be seen, from
this division of excretory labour, that the hypo- and meso-
dermal areas, with a division of the ectodermal, are dealt
with by the kidneys and bowel, while that of the systemic
sensory area, together with part of the outer haemal,
is accomplished by the sweat agencies of the skin, the
EXCRETION 199
work of gaseous excretion being achieved conjointly,
by the lungs aided by cutaneous and intestinal transpira-
tion ; it, therefore, follows, that we must look, in a
great proportion of the diseases of these areas, for the
clue to their etiology and relief, or removal, in the
condition, as to closure, or patency, of the excretory
canals, and emunctories.
Therapeutic, and other, agencies of the medical man,
must, to a great extent, be classified in accordance with
these physiologico-pathological conditions, and indications
for their use be found, according to the excretory area
and agency involved in the individual case ; accordingly
what are known as diuretic, purgative, diaphoretic, and
depletive remedies, are likely to be mostly indicated,
while, in a lesser number of cases, remedies having an
opposite effect, viz. astringent, etc., may, in like manner,
have to be used, as when excretion is exaggerated. Of
course, when advanced pathological states of excretion
have been attained, when chemical, bacterial, or other
morbid changes have ensued in the excretory structures
and the matters excreted, then, a wider range of choice
of remedies will have to be sought, to meet the super-
added pathogenic states and influences.
Akin to excretion is " casting off," or exuviation, of
the skin and its appendages, and denudation of the
free surfaces of the body, — wherever situated, this pro-
cess continually proceeding, and requiring for its main-
tenance due attention to its details, as the condition of
perfect health is impossible without it ; moreover, certain
morbid states owe their origin and continuance to the
neglect of nature's requirements in this matter, and
propagate themselves on, or in, the unremoved "cast
off" textures of the body.
It follows, from the above, that constant removal of
the effete materials, thus continually being freed from
all parts of the body, represents a sine qua non of
health, and it behoves every person, therefore, to see
to it, as a matter of everyday personal routine, as an
incentive to which, it may be well to recapitulate that
the necessity for it depends on the existence of a physio-
logical law, which is always operative, viz. that the body
200 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
gives out an amount of material, equal to what it takes in,
and, therefore, if any departure from its excretory
requirements be permitted to take place, a disturbance
of health in proportion thereto must, sooner, or later,
ensue.
EXTRACT XIX.
ON GLANDULAR STRUCTURES, OR ADENOGRAPHY
GENERALLY.
The structural and functional generalisations of the
older schools of anatomy are characterised by a firm and
wide grasp, of principles, an accurate appreciation of
structural detail, and knowledge of functional role, not by
any means second to that displayed by the new, and more
fully equipped, modern schools, and in no department of
structural anatomy is this more apparent than in that of
the glandular.
The structures grouped as glands represent a large
and most important order of organs, the functional role
of which is of the most vital character, in the operations of
organic life, as well in the preparation of pabulum for
integration purposes, as in the rearrangement of disinte-
grated material and effete products, for final excretory
disposal ; they have been, by common assent, divided
into two classes, viz. glands which empty their contents
by a duct or ducts, and glands which are said to be duct-
less (Figs. 68, 69) ; this division, or classification, is con-
venient, but, as to whether it is anatomically true, we have
our misgivings, because the nature and function of the
gland, must determine whether its secretion is to become
immediately an excretion, or whether it is formed for
further use in the economy. Looked at from this point
of view, the ductless glands may be regarded as entirely
belonging to the latter class, or those whose secretion is
for further use in the economy, while a large proportion
of the ducted glands also discharge through their ducts
202 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
materials, which are utilised for further purposes, before
their final excretion, only a comparatively limited number
of these glands primarily discharging their contents, as no
longer necessary and altogether effete.
Adenography is a subject of such large proportions, that
nothing less than a treatise would suffice to embrace it.
We shall, therefore, content ourselves with a very restricted
Fig. 68. Fig. 69.
Fig. 68.— Front view of the right kidney and suprarenal body
of A full-grown fcetus. (Allen Thomson. )
This figure shows the tabulated form of the foetal kidney, r ; v, the renal vein and
artery ; u, the ureter ; s, the suprarenal capsule, the letter is placed near the
sulcus in which the large veins (z/) are seen emerging from the interior of the
organ.
Fig. 69.— Section of the suprarenal body. (Allen Thomson.)
A vertical section of the suprarenal body of a fcetus, twice the natural size, showing
the lower notch by which it rests on the summit of the kidney, and the anterior
notch by which the veins issue, together with the distinction between the
medullary and cortical substance.
and general, survey of the subject, so as to afford an out-
let for the expression of certain views regarding it, that
have presented themselves to us, as we have been study-
ing subjects in some way related to it. The principle, or
function, of secretion, is entirely monopolised by gland
structures, although kindred operations are performed by
every cell body, the quasi-homogeneous wall of which is
capable of passing through it the material necessary for its
growth and maintenance, besides, in the non-processed cell,
the kindred and related function of excretion, the only
exception to which is said to be the nerve cell, which is
ON GLANDULAR STRUCTURES 203
said not to excrete, but which, we have already contended,
is no exception to the rule.
Arranging gland structures around the principle, or
function, of secretion, and on parallel lines with that of
circulation, regardless of their anatomical structural
arrangements, as to ducts, or no ducts, we shall begin
and continue their survey and classification along the
lines by which the elements of food are taken into the
system, utilised and finally disposed of, as excretionary
matter. Accordingly we would recognise the alimentary
canal, or tube, as the great and primary secretory organ,
or gland, whose office it is to secrete, or select, from the
materials passed through it, the raw materials, or elements,
out of which the secretory organs beyond can expiscate
and select the various nutritive, or plasmic, materials
required by the various structures and organs of the
body : this great primary secretory process being effected
by the mucosa lining it, assisted by the countless glandular
agencies and effluents with which it is surrounded and
inter-penetrated, assisted by its own vermicular manipu-
lative action and mechanical trituration. Next, and
originating in the wall of the intestinal canal, the vascular
textures of the blood circulation and lacteals take up
and continue the process of secretion, and dispose of their
products of the blood directly, and to the mesenteric, or
chyliferous, vasculature, with its peculiar and vivifying,
glandulature and long ducts, ending in the blood vascu-
lature, which blood vasculature conveys it to every texture,
after leaving the left side of the heart, for a renewed process
of secretion, and selection, by the lining membrane of its
ultimate, capillary distribution, and endothelial cell osmosis.
This process of secretion, may be called the process of
nutritive secretion, and assimilation, or nutrition proper,
and the last stage in the integrative disposal of the nutri-
tive plasma, in its course of metabolic, or rather anabolic,
change. Secretion is a process, therefore, in which a great
variety and number of tissues, besides the proper gland
structures, take part, and may be said to constitute the
whole processes of digestion, gastro-intestinal absorption,
chyle and blood circulation, and tissue assimilation, or
formative disposal, of organic plasma ; which organic
2o4 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
plasma may, thus, be said to be nutritively secreted by a
prolonged, but consecutive, series of unbroken vital
physico-chemical changes and circulatory disposals begin-
ning in the ingestion of the food, and terminating in its
assimilation by the tissues. Assisting, and making effec-
tive, this nutritive secretion, or assimilation, would seem
to be that order of glands called ductless, at least those
known as the spleen, thyroid, thymus and supra-renal,
which are attached to, or dove-tailed into, the blood circu-
lation ; the others, such as the coccygeal and carotid, as
well as the glandular structures known as the pituitary,
pineal and lachrymal, or ophthalmic and auditory lymph
spaces, with their associated nasopharyngeal excretory
mucosa, being related to the cerebro-spinal lymph circula-
tion. Besides, another extensive and well-marked series
of true gland structures is the lymphatic, which is entirely
involved in the involutionary disposal of systemic, or
haemal, lymph, and whatever finds its way into the haemal
lymphatic system of vessels ; while still another, and one
which is connected with the change of the chyle into
blood, or the evolutionary disposal of the raw alimentary
material, is the mesenteric system of glands.
As thus outlined, secretion, as applied to nutritive
assimilation, is effected by a series of physiological changes,
in the nature and character, of the ingested materials,
whereby they are elaborated, energised, vitalised and
prepared for assimilation by the tissues, in the accomplish-
ment of which, the intestinal mucosa, the blood and chyle
vasculatures and the great ductless blood glands take
part, each and all, in their own way, contributing their
quota to the great work, of nutritive secretion, conveyance
and integration.
Secretion, as here described, is one evolutionary process
terminating in the metabolism of the entire tissues of the
body, and is followed by an involutionary process, or
katabolism, by which the secreted and metabolised,
materials are finally broken up and restored to the outer
world as absolutely effete and devitalised.
EXTRACT XX.
ON THE PHENOMENA OF "SKIN MARKING" AND SKIN
EXFOLIATION, EPIDERMIC " SHEDDING," OR SOLID
EXCRETION.
It goes without saying that the manner and sequence of
dermal and epidermal change, in regard, both to rate of
growth of the skin elements, the length of time character-
ising the life of these elements, and the tardiness, or rapidity,
of their progressive changes and subsequent shedding,
must exercise a determining influence on our estimate of
the physiological and pathological conditions of the skin,
at all times, and must, in our opinion, be universally
allowed for, and, therefore, that a careful investigation of
the environment and history of pathologically developed
skin features will generally reveal the sources of such
phenomena, with the means of their obviation, and removal;
therefore, it behoves all engaged in dealing with such
matters to differentiate between the textural elements of
the skin tissue involved. Thus, its various vascular ele-
ments particularly, as well as its so-called solid histological
elements, must be individually and collectively examined
in each case, so that the order and sequence of the patho-
logical changes may be correctly appraised, in preparation
for the most rational prescription of the requisite treatment
for their removal being indicated (by the series of patho-
logical phenomena characterising the condition) on the
most scientifically indicated principles.
If the pathological condition be found to be due to
blood circulatory causes, then it will follow, as a histo-
logical corollary, or necessity, that the treatment should be
206 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
directed to the restoration of the physiological condition,.
or status quo ante, by the adoption of remedies which
appeal to the proper blood elements, as well as to their
containing and circulating vessels. If, on the other hand,
the neuro-vasculature and its contained nervine elements
be the primary, or main, cutaneous element involved in
the pathological process under observation, then it will,
equally necessarily, follow that an appeal must primarily
be made to the neural economy of the skin, and here it
may be asserted that it will, in the large majority of cases
of skin disease, be found that they originate in nervine
influences, and by degrees, or secondarily, involve the
blood vasculature and other structural elements of that
great compound anatomical development of superficial
protection and sensory organism. As a matter of fact
deducible from daily observation, we think it will be found
that this large proportion of nervine cutaneous ailments
is traceable, to a great extent, to faulty epidermic exfolia-
tion, to sudoriferous stasis, to aggravated, or chemically
perverted excretion, or to bacterially septic conditions of
the outflowing fluid.
As typical examples of cutaneous disease owing to these
neuro-cutaneous conditions, we would cite, hyper-keratoxis
— over-dry and thickened skin — variola and the exan-
themata generally. The first mentioned is a disease due
to aggravated, or retained, epidermal exuviation, and is
caused by interference, directly and indirectly, or both,
with the economy of epidermal disintegration, such inter-
ference being due to increased consistency of the epidermal
exuviae, from aggravated cement element, or to hindered
shedding, from absence of the disrupting influence of
moisture, consequent on a repressive environment, or a
deficient sweat excretion, or outflow. The second men-
tioned is usually due to the same causes, minus the opera-
tion of the influences of epidermal accretion. While the
third mentioned is modified by the outflow of a bacteria-
laden cerebro-spinal fluid, impregnated and intoxicated,
within the cerebro-spinal cavity, with a specific microbe,
the outflow and release of which constitutes the familiar
marking of the long debated disease small-pox. The
exanthemata generally conform, in their main features, to
PHENOMENA OF "SKIN MARKING" 207
variola, being determined on similar lines, but differentiated,
through specific differences in the habits and character of
their respective bacterial causes, each developing its specific
features, in accordance with the growth and life-history
of its own peculiar bacillus, thus unifying and diversifying
the " methods and manners " of this category of morbid
entities with a chameleon-like character, as singular, and
manifold in its manifestations as the " natural history "
of its origin necessitates and determines. The almost
infinite variety of skin eruptions, or, at anyrate, that portion
of them which owes its origin to microbic organisms, may
be grouped with the more definite class of the exanthemata
proper, with advantage to scientific accuracy, and with the
added likelihood of having their treatment more rationally
indicated, than when considered separate morbid entities,
devoid of " natural history " affinities, and with altogether
specific characters.
The phenomena of pathological cuticular exfoliation
and epidermic shedding thus become a key to unlock
many of the secrets " lying hid " on the very surface of
humanity, and presenting the most familiar, as well as
conspicuous, marring features, which it is daily made
aware that it possesses, and which call aloud unceasingly
for removal, on the grounds of personal self-respect, as
well as asstheticism, and the creation, not survival, of the
fittest.
The phases through which the normal cuticular exfolia-
tion passes, in the lives of the longest livers, constitute an
unbroken record of developmental evolution of the most
exact description, physiologically and histologically speak-
ing, which it is possible to observe throughout animated
nature, vegetable and animal, but its study has, we think,
not been given that exact and exhaustive attention which
its importance, as an instrument of utilitarian importance,
in medical, medico-legal and purely scientific affairs, entitles
it to. We would, therefore, bespeak for it, the considera-
tion, in these various aspects, which that importance
warrants. Moreover, its study has an attractiveness and
repulsiveness, so to speak, in the popular mind, which, if
properly directed, may yield results, fruitful of benefits to
the world at large and provocative of individual, as well
208 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
as communal, effort, in personal aesthetics and hygiene,
which will amply repay both the individual and the com-
munity, in both these aspects of this most important and
all-pervading subject — its reward being ultimately realised
and expressed in the ability to appreciate the word, cir-
cumspice.
As we have, elsewhere, endeavoured to show that every
period of the life of the individual human being is charac-
terised by certain external, or cutaneous, appearances, it
will be sufficient here to recapitulate that infancy, youth,
middle life and age, are stamped with such indelible and
unmistakable features that they are evident to the "man
in the street," and that it is generally found unnecessary
to put a question to the subject of observation in order
to test the truth of "the first impression. "
These "tell tale" appearances usually involve the whole
textures of the skin, and are evolved by the incidence of
certain specific and constantly occurring histological
changes which fundamentally alter the proportions of
these textures in their relationship to each other, as well
as to the subjacent non-cutaneous tissues. The very
unusual expediting, or retarding, of these normal cutaneous
changes, should, therefore, be a warning to the clinician,
when called to give a pathological reason for their
occurrence, and should put him on his guard against
coming to " rash conclusions " and unjustified suspicions,
notwithstanding that he may have some claim to be
adjudged a " Sherlock Holmes."
We are persuaded it will be found that the great
determining cause of these cutaneous changes is the
altering relationship in arrangement and proportions of
the two neural elements of the skin, the sympathetic and
the systemic, and of the involved blood vasculature, these
changes occurring in regular and rhythmic manner, in
accordance with the conditions, and requirements, of the
ages, or stages, of life — the sympathetic nervature pre-
dominating at the, earlier and later stages, and the
systemic at that stage when the proper work and functions
of life are being daily taken part in, or when the " battle
of life " is being daily waged. Thus, in infancy and age,
the predominance of the sympathetic and reflex nervine
PHENOMENA OF "SKIN MARKING
209
phenomena, due to the undeveloped and the dismantled
condition of the systemic nervature, respectively, is in
strict accordance with the functional necessities and
nervine requirements, at these periods of life, while in
that period of life involving the incessantly, the acutely,
and the intelligently, controlled exercise, of the voluntary,
or systemic, nervature, with its connected non-nervous
structures, or tissue elements, strictly accordant skin
changes likewise ensue. As an example of the regular
and rhythmic sequence of developmental changes, in one
feature of cutaneous surface appearance, we would call
attention to the " ridge and furrow " markings (Fig. 70),
Fig. 70.— Magnified view of four of the ridges of the epidermis,
with short furrows or notches across them ! also the
openings of the sudoriferous ducts. (After Breschet. )
of the palmar and plantar surfaces of the terminal
phalanges, as well as general palmar and plantar surfaces
of the hands and feet. These markings, especially of the
fingers and toes have, for a long time, attracted the
attention of both the lay and the expert observer, and, to
some extent, advantage has been taken of the information
so gained for purposes of medico-legal and other
enquiries ; such being the case it, therefore, behoves
us to eliminate sources of error from our reading of
them, and to place, if possible, on a more exact basis,
the information which is sought from them. Thus,
according to our observations, it will be found that
the original, or ground, plan, is adhered to, from
histological necessity, throughout the greater part, but
210 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
not the whole, of life, while the depth of the furrows,
and, consequently, the height of the ridges, undergoes a
regular series of changes, according to the individual
experience, as to employment, and the age reached — the
greatest height of the ridges being reached during the
period of most active employment, when the tactile
susceptibility of the sensory nervature, or the " tactus
eruditus," has been fully attained, and, consequently, it
will be found to synchronise with the greatest depth of
the intervening furrows — except where local " tear and
wear " interfere.
The reason for this will no doubt be found in the
greater determination of the nervine nutritive elements
from the central, or cerebro-spinal, neurons to the
constantly and acutely active peripheral nervature of
the digital terminal expansions and palmar surfaces. It
will, consequently, be found that the infant has well-
marked, but not conspicuously developed, ridge and
furrow digital details, that the youth shows more decided
development of these, that the adult reaches the climax of
development, at the period synchronising with that age
when the tactile sense is in continual and everyday
erudite use, and that when the active age limit has been
reached, the acutely delineated ridge and furrow markings
begin to show signs of levelling down, which continue to
grow until all that is left of them is a landmark, in the
form of a fragmentary and belated ridge, or furrow,
which at last merges into a smooth and even surface>
polished by the hand of time into a uniform, thin and
worn vestige, to contain and protect the crumbling body
within, and to afford a tactile surface, sufficient to maintain
a, more and more, restricted communication with the
world without, as the diminishing necessities for inter-
course with it cease and determine. It ought, here, to
be mentioned that ridge and furrow markings survive
longest on the surfaces of the skin of the thumb and
forefinger, with, perhaps, part of that of the middle finger,
which may be due to the manner of innervation of these
surfaces, but which, we are strongly of opinion, is also
partially due to the continuous necessity for the passage
of nerve impulses through these digits in particular, and
PHENOMENA OF "SKIN MARKING" 211
the consequent greater determination of nervine material
to their terminal tactile organs.
A like fate befalls the appendages of the skin, during
the passing of the stages of life, the hair of the head, and
face, especially, from its conspicuous position, showing the
markings of the passage of time so clearly and definitely
as to become, in reality, a personal historical narrative,
" known and read of all men " ; this fate being due to
the operation of the same physiological laws and factors
which determine the general cuticular growth and decay.
Depending on the operation of the same somatic, or
developmental, factors, is the disappearance of much of
the subcutaneous tissue from the digital extremities, so
Fig. 71. — Compound papillae from the palm of the hand.
Magnified 60 diameters.
a, basis of a papilla ; b, b, divisions or branches of the same ; c, r, branches belonging
to papillae of which the bases are hidden from view. (After Kolliker.)
that the plump well-filled appearance usually characterising
the ends of the fingers gives place to one more or less
shrunken, with, consequent, wrinkles, running parallel
with the bones and tendons. These markings, it need
scarcely be said, begin to supersede the original ridge and
furrow markings, and ultimately usurp their position,
producing a more or less completely new system of
markings, necessitating the alteration, if required, of any
early medico-legal negative, which may have been taken,
in the case of the aged criminal, or others, who take an
innocent interest in these matters of personal appearance.
Pursuing the subject more generally, it becomes
apparent that we have, in the study of the evolution of
skin changes and phenomena, physiological and patho-
logical, a subject, having an independent bearing of very
large proportions which calls for a broad general, as well
212 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
as special, attention, while we also perceive, that its
bearings on the subject of the body generally requires
to be pursued with an eye to the reaping of whatever
utilitarian advantages it can afford, in indicating, especially,
the lines along which medical and surgical art can pro-
ceed with the greatest hope of success, in the treatment of
disease, the maintenance of health and the rectification of
faulty structure.
The skin, moreover, being to a great extent struc-
turally, as well as functionally, entitled to rank as an
organism, separate from the proper body structures and
organs which it encloses, with special duties to perform,
and a protective regime to fulfil, we must be prepared to
find, in and on it, much of independent pathological
change, dependent on merely local conditions, and much
due to its connection with the proper body structures, and
organs, and, therefore, much time and effort will have
to be spent, in the tracing of inter-relationships and
inter-dependencies of superficial and deep-seated disease,
respectively, in order that these skin affections may be
traced to their sources and appropriate curative, as well
as preventive, measures, be adopted. In this regard, we
repeat, that these sources will very, indeed, most fre-
quently, be found in, and to emanate from, the central
nervous system, with its surrounding layers of cerebro-
spinal fluid, where the required facilities for the entrance,
accumulation and spread of chemical and bacterial
morbific agencies abound, and whence also the requisite
distributive media are supplied, ready to hand, in the
continuous, inter-meningeal and inter-neurilemmar spaces
of brain, cord and nerves which ultimately debouch
within and on the surface of the skin, throughout its
entire extent.
It ought here to be added that the study of the
incidence of skin disease as thus viewed, sheds a " com-
parative" light, of a most illuminating character, on the
incidence of disease, as it manifests itself in the motor
aspect of the systemic nervature, and in the compoundly
innervated structures of the various viscera, and internal
membrane invested cavities of the body; thus, to mention
but one instance of the occurrence of bacterio-pathological
PHENOMENA OF "SKIN MARKING" 213
sequence, viz. the, so-called, malignant endocarditis, we
observe, the invasion of the cerebro-spinal cavity with the
germs of the pneumococcus, the subsequent invasion by
continuity, through the neurilemmar passages, and inter-
spaces of the pneumogastric nerves and structures of the
heart, and the growth there of broods of the microbe,
originally reared in the medium of the cerebro-spinal
fluid. We might cite other instances, but let this suffice
to attract that notice which, we contend, the intrinsic
value of the subject, in enabling us to affiliate and
differentiate morbid entities, entitle it to.
Moreover, we are convinced, so far as our application
of this key, to the opening up of new problems, has
enabled us to do, that a great future is in store for its
study, in clearing up many obscure and impenetrable
regions of seemingly disconnected, but related, morbid
phenomena, and indicating a more scientific, and less
empirical, manner, of their treatment, preventive, curative
and ameliorative.
Furthermore, here we find, ready to hand, a rational
explanation of the paradoxical phenomena of metastasis
and kindred pathological occurrences so frequently to be
met with in the experience of every clinical observer.
EXTRACT XXI. a.
ON THE STAGES OF EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN
ORGANISM, DIVIDED INTO UNICELLULAR, BLASTO-
DERMIC, OR MULTICELLULAR, NEURENTERIC, AND
VISCERO-SKELETAL.
The sequence of formative events, embraced in the
above series, comprises the whole of the evolutionary
stages of human organic life, which, when regarded in
conjunction with the involutionary stages of that life,
Fig. 72. Fig. 73.
Fig. 72.— Diagram of an animal cell much magnified. (E. A. S.)
/, protoplasm, with vacuoles and granules ; n, nucleus, with intranuclear network
and nucleolus («')•
Fig. 73.— Striated epithelium cell, from the duct of a salivary
gland ; highly magnified. semi-diagrammatic. (e. a. s.)
gr, granular protoplasm ; str, striae ; «, nucleus.
constitute the whole " span " of its existence. The
phenomena embraced in each and every stage of human,
in common with all other, life are the outcome of
physico-dynamic agency and specific, or vital, formative
impulse, embraced in and transmitted from parent, to
ON THE STAGES OF EVOLUTION
215
offspring, modified by environment, and again transmitted,
in turn, to a succeeding generation, with attributes, and
characteristics, secured, to perpetuate the species, and
maintain its ascendency, as an evolutionary instrument.
Transmitted, or inherited, nervine energy, which is here
equal, or equivalent, to vital energy, is the dynamic
agency and formative means by which lifeless matter is
converted into living protoplasm, fashioned into organic
form and endowed with separate, and independent,
existence, fitting it to perform its specific functions, as
a living unit, in the long life roll of organic forms.
That energy, while vitalising, and organising, the primordial
Fig. 74.
Fig. 75.
Fig. 74.— A cartilage cell of the salamander, showing fine
FILAMENTS IN THE PROTOPLASM. (Flemming.)
Fig. 75.— Diagram of an animal cell (with two nuclei). (Klein.)
cell (Figs. 72, 73, 74, 75) protoplasm, is operated by
molecular nervine machinery, destitute of the proper
histological elements of a nervous system, but, neverthe-
less, by a system of dynamic production, storage and
distribution, absolutely effective in innervating, and
meeting the vital requirements of the unicellular
organism, and of the individual dynamic cell wants of
the communal cell organism (Figs. 76, 77), as it exists
in the human organism previous to the evolution of the
sympathetic nervous system, and as it exists in every
cell unit, of the communal cell organism, each of which
cells continues to be thus individually innervated
throughout its entire life-history.
Nerve energy, or force, may, therefore, be, nay must
consist, so far as analogy warrants the statement, of a
2l6
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
conversion of one, or more, of the ordinary forms of
energy, or force, into that of nerve energy, or force, by
the transmitted potentialities of the fecundated ovum, or
primordial germ, and so long as that process of dynamic
conversion can be continued, so long will the life of the
cell, and the multicell, organism, be maintained, and the
great function of innervation be effective, as the vitalising,
and formative, medium, dynamically, and physically, in
parent, and offspring, alike ; each generation being but
Fig. 76.— First stages of segmentation of a mammalian ovum;
semi-diagrammatic. (Drawn by Dr. Allen Thomson, after Ed. v.
Beneden's description.)
2./*., zona pellucida ;/.£•/., polar globules ; ect., ectomere ; enf., entomere. a, division
into two blastomeres ; b, stage of four blastomeres ; c, eight blastomeres, the
ectomeres partially enclosing the entomeres ; d, e, succeeding stages of segmen-
tation showing the more rapid division of the ectomeres and the enclosure of
the entomeres by them.
a repetition of another, in unbroken succession and order,
even from the "original departure " of organic, from
inorganic matter, under the vital, and formative, influ-
ence, of the original cosmic energy, plus " the creative "
stimulus and the subsequent continued conversion of that
cosmic energy into vital energy, or life.
Protoplasm, as it is now technically called, was, or is,
the first living, or independently existent, organic material,
and the materio-dynamic basis of the whole life forms of
the globe, wherein are fashioned and organically evolved
its entire flora and fauna, by the formative impulse
ON THE STAGES OF EVOLUTION 217
given to its "first created" particles, and transmitted to
individual organised entities.
After, and out of, protoplasm, are elaborated the indi-
vidual organic units known, as cell (see Fig. 72), and multi-
Fig. 77.— Sections of the ovum of the rabbit during the later
stages of segmentation, showing the formation of the
blastodermic vesicle. (E. v. Beneden.)
a, section showing the enclosure of entomeres by ectomeres except at one spot— the
blastopore ; b, more advanced stage in which fluid is beginning to accumulate
between entomeres and ectomeres, the former completely enclosed ; c, the fluid
has much increased, so that a large space separates entomeres from ectomeres
except at one part ; d, blastodermic vesicle, its wall formed of a layer of ecto-
dermic cells, with a patch of entomeres adhering to it at one part ; z.p , ecr., ent.,
as before.
cell (see Fig. 76), creatures vegetable and animal, whose
vital energy, or life, although indistinguishable from nerve
energy, is molecularly generated, stored and operated,
without the intervention of a nervous system properly
so called, but, necessarily, a molecular, or non-cellulo-fibral,
nervous system ; indeed, in the multi-cell creature, a
2i 8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
iibral nervous system, so to speak, is established, as the
primordial, or original, cell undergoes mitosis, whereby,
every added cell continues correlated to, and innervated
by, that cell, or the communal, or multi-cell, centre,
through the connected, or inter-cell processes, left by, and
maintained in, structural continuity with the various
sections of the mitosing cell, cells, and cell groups, to
their peripheral boundaries, or to their full structural
extent (see Fig. 77).
From this point, in the process of evolution of the
nervous system proper, as the vital activities and neces-
sities of living things increase, and the conditions of
independent existence become more complex, it is ob-
served that vital energy is allowed to " play at large " less
and less, and that channels, strands, or filaments are
Fig. 78. — A. Section through part of a bilaminar blastoderm of
THE CAT. (E. A. S.)
ect., ent., ectoderm, entoderm ; z.p., thinned out zona pellucida.
provided, along which it can pass with greater ease and
precision, and through which it can be operated by central
control, according to the dynamic necessities of the indi-
vidual structural elements of the increasingly complex
organisms. Here, we see the origin and evolution, or
development, of the first great nervous system so called,
viz. the sympathetic nervous system (Fig. 78). From
our earlier remarks on nerve energy, or life, we might,
however, correctly call the sympathetic nervous system
the second nervous system, inasmuch as the uni-cell
organisms are kept alive, or innervated, by molecular
continuity and intra-cell connective processes, and, there-
fore, by "a nervous system" and, of necessity, the first
nervous system connected with the living protoplasm and
primary organisation of living forms generally. While
this is, no doubt, correct, for convenience' sake, we shall
entitle the sympathetic nervous system the first great
ON THE STAGES OF EVOLUTION 219
nervous system, or, in other words, we shall include
under the title of the first great nervous system, both
of the systems, the intermolecular and intercellular
(see Figs. 72, 78). As the unicellular organism cannot
live apart from its innervating mechanism and energy,
and, in fact, the cell organism and its innervating
mechanism and energy are one and indivisible, it
becomes necessary to regard every such organism as a
nerve unit, consisting, or composed, of living matter
and energy, or, in other words, a living form, whether it
be in a unicellular, or multicellular, condition.
No cell, being able to live apart from nerve energy
and mechanism, and each cell of a multicellular organism,
being regarded as a nerve unit, we must conclude, that
each of those cells is a component part of one, or the
other, nervous system, and that, therefore, every cell of
the human body, apart from the systemic nervous system,
by whatever name known to science, is a sympathetic
nerve cell, innervated by, and functionally operated from,
that system, thus obviating vital inconsistencies and
material and dynamic, overlapping, or redundancy. Thus
is insured centralisation for functional purposes, or
administration, and individual cell freedom, as well as
communal control and association of vital effort, in con-
certed work, and co-operative intention, and performance.
The individual sympathetic nerve cell is operated by
molecular nervous machinery, while the communal cell
groups are operated for communal ends, by inter-cell con-
nective processes, developed and left by the original cell
mitosis, and adapted for the transmission of nerve impulse,
from cell to cell, and from cell group to cell group, the
required energy for the higher wants of communal in-
nervation being produced, stored and distributed, by the
ganglia developed throughout the length and breadth
of the sympathetic nervine area, and, perhaps, to some
extent, borrowed from the systemic nervous system, and
received through its communicating branches, from the
associated systemic centres of production and distribution.
The sympathetic nervature, besides the offices already
mentioned as peculiarly its own, fashions and evolves the
most highly organised and functioned structure, known
220 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
to science, viz. the systemic nervous system, and sus-
tains it materially and dynamically, so that it can perform
neural functions, of an order altogether unknown to the
sympathetic nervous system itself as well as a higher
order of functional work known as psychic, which brings the
human being into relationships outside itself, in a way
altogether transcendental and sui generis, and thereby
gives it views of itself, and the surrounding universe,
which blend with and finally bring it into intimate relation-
ship with, the great First Cause, of which it discovers
itself to be but the organic effect and the conscious pro-
duct, although the highest order of evolutionary effort,
Fig. 79.— Embryonic area, with outline of the vascular area,
from a rabbit's ovum of seven days. a*. (From Kolliker.)
00, vascular area ; ag, embryonic area ; pr, primitive streak and groove ; rf, medullary
groove.
and, at present, the only representative of deeply rational
and moral being.
The systemic nervous system, being the most highly
organised and functioned, structure in the human body,
is made capable of bridging over the gulf fixed, between
merely organised matter, and life, and the psychic, or
purely cerebro-dynamic, phenomena, and effecting a
union, between the inorganic matter of the cosmos, which
is connected with the organic life of the globe, on the one
hand, and the ultra-cosmic universe on the other, which
reaches from the illimitable and eternal, in the past, to the
illimitable and eternal, in the future, and represents the
progress so far as it has yet reached, of the process of
evolution, which has now become a great working theory,
ON THE STAGES OF EVOLUTION 221
by which we are enabled to trace the sequence of events
in the past, and dimly to perceive the probable trend of
events in the future.
Fig. 80. — Dorsal view of a blastoderm and embryo chick having
five mesoblastic somites. (From Balfour.)
a.pr, anterior part of the primitive streak ; p.pr, posterior part ; the medullary ridges
have come together in the greater part of their extent, but have not yet united ;
the caudal swellings are visible on each side of a.pr.
The systemic nervous system is evolved, from the
ectodermal division of the sympathetic (Fig. 79), nerv ne
area, by the growth and involution, of the dorsal segment
Fig. 81. -Transverse section through the embryo of the chick
and blastoderm at the end of the first day. Magnified from
90 to 100 times. (From Kolliker.)
h, epiblast ; dd, hypoblast ; sp, mesoblast ; Pv, medullary groove ; m, medullary
plates ; c/i, chorda dorsalis ; uzup, proto-vertebral plate ; uzuh, commencement of
division of mesoblast into its upper and lower laminae ; between ^/"and h are the
dorsal laminae or ridges which by their approximation close in the medullary
canal.
of the blastoderm (Fig. 80), and to some extent invades,
and innervates its hypodermal, or ventral, segment, from
which it becomes ultimately differentiated, but not ab-
solutely separated, thereafter ; its further evolution, and
distribution to the mesodermal (Figs. 81, 82, 83) and
hypodermal areas, being secured by elongation of its
222
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
axonal cell processes and the inter-penetration and blend-
ing of their structural elements, with ultimate intimate
union of their respective terminal nervine extensions,
and, consequent complete innervation, unal and dual,
Fig. 82. — Transverse section of an embryo chick in the latter
half of the second day, at the place where the vertebral
somites cease. -8T3- (From Kolliker.)
rw, dorsal ridges : rf, medullary groove or canal beginning to close ; uivp, proto-
vertebral plate ; sp, lateral plate of the mesoblast ; //, epiblast ; dd, hypoblast ; ao,
primitive right aorta ; sp, commencement of division of the mesoblast which
forms the body cavity.
single and combined. At this stage of the organic pro-
gress of evolution of the human organism, the most
notable feature is the neurenteric canal (Figs. 84, 85),
which is most happily named, as it is a canal in every sense
vng
_ mp ^.Tipl
Fig. 83.— Transverse section through the embryo of the chick
and blastoderm on the second day. (From Kolliker.)
dd, hypoblast ; ch, chorda dorsalis ; uw, primordial vertebrae; mr, medullary plates;
h, corneous layer or epiblast ; uw/i, cavity of the primordial vertebral mass ; inp,
mesoblast dividing at sp into hpl, parietal, and df, visceral laminae ; ting, Wolffian
duct beginning in the intermediate cell-mass.
of the word, and contains a common fluid, stretching from
the buccal cavity to the anterior vesicle, or rudiment of
the future brain, with an unbroken lumen and continuous
walls. It is V shaped, becoming open at its buccal end,
and closed at its cerebral vesicular termination, its two
halves becoming differentiated and partially separated, at
the posterior extremity of the V, and united by anasto-
ON THE STAGES OF EVOLUTION 223
mosis at their anterior extremities through the junction
of the buccal diverticulum with the infundibulum in
Fig. 84.— Diagrammatic longitudinal sections of elasmobranch
embryo and blastoderm. (From Balfour. )
A, younger stage with two primary layers ; B, more advanced stage with three layers
and invagination at the hinder end of the embryo ; C, still more advanced ; the
embryo raised from the blastoderm with neural and primitive alimentary canals
and neurenteric communication between them.
ep, epiblast ; m. mesoblast ; x, epiblast continuous with hypoblast ; nc, neural canal ;
ch, notochord ; al, alimentary cavity ; sg, segmentation cavity ; n, nuclei of the
yolk.
the matrix of the hypophysis, the anterior and posterior,
lobes of which uniting elements respectively, constitute
Fig. 85. — Diagrammatic longitudinal section of an embryo of
lacerta. (From Balfour.)
pp, body cavity ; am, amnion fold ; nc, neurenteric canal ; ch, notochord ; hy, hypo-
blast ; ep, epiblast of the medullary plate ; pr, primitive streak. In the primitive
streak all the layers are partially fused.
the developmental basis, the processes, of posterior neur-
enteric differentiation, and anterior neurenteric union,
224
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
taking place simultaneously, and, so, maintaining a per-
sistent, continued, but modified continuity, of the two
divisions of the canal.
After this simultaneous separation and reunion of the
canal, its anterior limb becomes the alimentary, while its
posterior limb becomes the neural, canal, each of which
canals continues to perform the functions of a canal, and
to keep up a modified connection with each other, in the
performance of their respective, but absolutely different,
functional (Fig. 87) roles.
Fig. 86.— Outlines showing the relation of the axis of the
embryo to the ovum in birds and mammals. (a. t.)
A, Fowl's egg opened after 35 hours' incubation, showing the embryo chick within the
transparent and vascular area on the surface of the yolk ; at right angles to the
long axis of the egg ; B & C, two early stages of development in the ovum of
the dog, showing the primitive streak (in B) and the commencing embryo (in C) ;
the line of the uterine tube and long diameter of the ovum being at right angles
to the vertebral axis of the embryo.
/The alimentary canal remains an open canal, secured at
its extremities by mechanisms of entrance and exit, to
provide for the reception, retention and residuum dis-
posal, of the alimentary materials supplied to the body ;
while the neural canal, receives into its own central cavity,
along with the intra-spaces of its peripheral tributaries the
systemic nervous system comprised of, brain, cord and
nerves, providing a great fluid surrounding and inter-
penetrating space, in which all these neural elements can
float, secured, and insulated, from centre to periphery,
and from periphery to centre.
The alimentary canal is provided with a series of locks,
ON THE STAGES OF EVOLUTION 225
among which, gastro-enteric areas, for general, as well as
special, treatment of the alimentary materials, are pro-
vided, and thus, follow each other, the oral lock, the
pharyngeo-cesophageal, the cardiac, the pyloric, the ileo-
cecal, the sigmoid, and the anal, locks, with the intervening
digestive spaces, the oro-pharynx, the cesophagus, the
stomach proper, the duodeno-jejuno-ileal intestine, the
caeco-colonal bowel and the rectum. Each of these canal
divisions, or digestive areas, is provided with a series of
Fig. 87.— Outline of the embryo-chick at the end of the third
day, to show the inflections of the body and the commence-
MENT OF THE LIMBS. (After His.)
1 to 5 the cerebral vesicles ; b, the mouth ; mit, the lower jaw, and behind that the
branchial bars and clefts ; au, the auditory vesicle ; k, the heart ; ae, anterior
extremity ; pe, posterior extremity ; the hinder part of the body is still prone upon
the surface of the yolk, the head is now lying on its left side and between is seen
the gradual torsion of the vertebral column and trunk.
secretional fluids, and more or less absorptional machinery,
whereby the prolonged and complicated process of di-
gestion, is fully effected, and the irreducible residuum
returned to the outer world. We may take it, moreover,
that each of these digestive stages represents a specific
form of digestion, in which certain alimentary articles are
treated, and that the whole of them are required, to meet
the necessities of a complex digestive process, such as,
undoubtedly, is present in man. The oro-pharyngeal
digestion may be described as preparatory, but most
important, in that the saliva from six different glands,
226 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and the glosso-pharyngeal muco-colloid excretion are
intimately mixed with the pristine alimentary materials, on
some of which they must immediately act, while, on others,
they may subsequently exert a digestive influence. The
oesophageal digestive influence, must consist of admixture
with the local mucous discharge, and what mechanico-
chemical change is effected in transit to the stomach. The
gastric digestion is a long, and complex process, combin-
ing the effects of mechanical, chemical, and physiological,
influences, and culminating in removal, by absorptive
agency, of a considerable portion of the alimentary
material, while the duodeno-jejuno-ileal digestion, from
the extent of surface passed over, and the many fluids
mixed with the chyle during its prolonged transit, must be
of scarcely less importance than that of the stomach,
although the articles of food digested differ in chemical,
and other characteristics, from those dealt with in the
stomach. In both these digestions the dynamic agencies
at work comprise mechanical, chemical and physiological,
acting singly and in combination, in ordinary, as well as,
specific manner, and having the effect of securing the
absorption of a large proportion of the principal elements
of the food, before their passage through the ileo-caecal
valve. The caeco-colonal digestion differs very much from
the preceding digestions, inasmuch as the alvine contents
now become stercoraceous, and can yield for nutritive
purposes a lesser quantity, and a somewhat peculiar quality,
of digested material, the digestive agencies here, are the
same as in the preceding, plus, it may be, the disinte-
grative, and specific, influence, of bacterial organisms, or
living dynamics, in the form, for instance, of the anaerobic
bacillus coli. Following the caeco-colonal, is the final stage,
of digestion, the rectal, which is separated from the caeco-
colonal by the mechanical obstruction, or pseudo-valve,
effected by the sigmoid flexure, and which may be regarded,
as the inner sphincter, or a safeguard for the sphincter ani.
In fact, the sigmoid flexure may be regarded as possessing
the function of faecal meter, or faecimeter, if we may use the
term, allowing to pass only what is meant for prospective
evacuation, and retaining behind what is yet fit to afford
further nutriment. Consequently, we may regard the
ON THE STAGES OF EVOLUTION 227
rectal digestion, as bereft of almost all the attributes of
a digestive process, although, from clinical experience, we
have learned, that even the rectal mucosa is capable of
absorbing ready-prepared nutritive matter, and can be
relied upon to do so in certain suitable emergencies.
The enteric canal, thus, remains patent, or hollow, and,
passes through it the food which is to serve for the
nutriment of the body, the compartments, into which it is
divided, serving for specific parts of the digestive process,
and the absorption, of specific elements of nutrition, by
the various local mucosae. Many of the glands, and a
number of the principal viscera, empty themselves into it,
adding digestive elements, and excreting, it may be, certain
effete matters, for removal from the body.
At its interior and posterior, extremities, it is in a
modified form, still connected with its former neural half,
and affords a means of exit for the disposal of super-
abundant cerebro-spinal fluid, which continues to represent
the fluid with which it was originally occupied, and which
it continues to utilise both for mechanical and physio-
logical, purposes.
The neural half of the neurenteric canal, is almost
completely occupied, as we have already said, by the
systemic nervous system, which has grown into it, and
then pushed before it, by every axonal fibre, or process,
which grows out of it, a continuation of its meningeal
coverings, into every hole and corner of the body, inner-
vated by that system, as a protection, or inhibiting wall,
in the form of neurilemma and perineurium, or meningeal
continuation.
The neurally unoccupied part of the canal, is, therefore,
represented by the ventricles of the brain, the central
canal of the cord, the sub-arachnoid and sub-dural, spaces,
centrally, and by the intra-neurilemmar spaces of the
nerves, peripherally, all these spaces, being continuous, the
one, with the other, and all occupied by the cerebro-spinal
fluid, the representative of the original neurenteric fluid,
which occupied the undifferentiated neurenteric canal.
The systemic nervous system, has, therefore, projected
itself, along the lines of least resistance, into the meso-
dermic, and hypodermic, areas of the body, becoming
228 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
invaginated, by meningeal continuations, throughout its
entire extent, thus securing for itself, effective mechanical
protection and support, continuity of proper nervine
elements and complete structural isolation, and functional,
or dynamic, insulation, so constituting itself the great
neuro-dynamic instrument and agency, in the human
organism, throughout its systemically innervated extent.
The viscero-skeletal stage of development and evolution,
is represented by the formative process, of surrounding
the alimentary segment of the neurenteric canal, with
organs, and structures, fitting it for the performance of
the digestion, aeration and distribution, of the alimentary
materials, to suit the wants of the whole organism and
providing an osseous casing for the central nervous system,
consisting of brain and cord, and an osseous skeleton,
whereby the voluntary musculature is enabled to effect
locomotion, and through that, the manifold activities of a
living and responsible existence.
This short recital gives, in brief, but recognisable out-
line, the salient features of the process of evolution through
which the human body passes, before it begins its down-
ward, or involutionary, course, or when aging begins to
make itself felt, and to proclaim itself in every feature.
EXTRACT XXI. b.
ON THE DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION OF THE
HUMAN ORGANISM.
Evolution is now generally adopted, as the best working
theory in science building, so to speak, and the line of
progress, to which all advances of truth and all tentative
attempts at systemising knowledge should conform, in
Fig. 88.
Fig. 89.
Fig. 88.— Ovum of the rabbit from the fallopian tube, twelve
hours after impregnation. (From Bischoff.)
In the zona a, spermatozoa are seen ; b, two hyaline globules or polar bodies within
the cavity left by the shrinking of the yolk.
Fig. 89.— Front and side views of an early human ovum four
times the natural size. (From Reichert.)
This ovum is supposed to be of thirteen days after impregnation. The surface bare
of villi is that next the wall of the uterus, showing at e, the opacity produced by
the thickened embryonic disc. The villi covered chiefly the marginal parts of
the surface.
order, that overlappings, and shortcomings, of related
truths, may be obviated, on the one hand, and " made
good," on the other.
Regarding evolution, from this point of view, as an
instrument of scientific progress, we would seek to take
230
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
advantage of its services, so as to place in review, before
the u mind's eye," the manner and method of man's
growth, from the " monad " to the " cosmos " of organic
rank, by bringing forward, and naming in detail, a few of
the outstanding genetic features of his evolutionary pro-
duction, and mature being.
To begin with the earliest stage of his developmental
evolution, we recognise in it the mutual amalgamation of
Fig. 91.
Fig. 90.— Human ovum of 12 to 13 days. (From Allen Thomson.)
i. The ovum of the natural size with simply villous chorion.
2. The same opened and magnified seven times. The large yolk-sac is seen with the
embryo seen sidewise lying flat upon the yolk-sac.
Fig. 91.— Human ovum and embryo of about 14 days.
(From Allen Thomson.)
A. The ovum opened, half the chorion laid to one side and the embryo and yolk-sac
seen in the other ; natural size.
B. The embryo and yolk-sac viewed from the dorsal aspect, magnified about ten
times ; «, yolk-sac ; b, hind brain portion ; here for a space the medullary canal
is closed ; c, the mid-brain open superiorly ; d. hinder part of the medullary canal
also open ; e, portion of membrane, perhaps belonging to the torn amnion.
two, Adamic, or parental, materio-dynamic entities (Fig.
88), the vital union of which founds the future organism,
and the survival of which, secures, and has secured, the
continuity of the human race, from " its cradle," to its
present generation and ensures its continuance into future
generations. In this earliest stage of development are
dimly visible, the working of the vital principles, which are
to govern the future progress of developmental change, as
well as, the method of unicellular life, which is continued
as such, under the advancing stages of developmental
progress, by cellular proliferation, and structural formation.
DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION
231
The cell, here, represents the most elementary mode of the
operation of vital energy, in the conduct of the affairs of life,
on the inorganic matter of nature, by which it becomes
organic, and subservient to the requirements of metabolism,
and capable of assuming, by formative law, the condition, by
mitotic division and subdivision, of multicellular organis-
ation which forms the second well-marked division of
developmental evolution (see Figs. 76, 77). During this
Fig. 92. —First stages of segmentation of a mammalian ovum;
semi-diagrammatic. (Drawn by Dr. Allen Thomson, after Ed. v.
Beneden's description.)
z.p., zona pellucida ;fi.gl., polar globules ; ect., ectomere ; ent., entomere. a, division
into two blastomeres ; b, stage of four blastomeres ; c. eight blastomeres, the
ectomeres partially enclosing the entomeres ; d, e, succeeding stages of segmen-
tation showing the more rapid division of the ectomeres and the enclosure of
the entomeres by them.
stage, as the process of mitosis, or kariokinesis, advances,
the proliferating cells assume the general structural form
of blastoderm (Figs. 94, 95), which in turn assumes
a, layered, or stratiform, arrangement, the precursor
of a structural division, of the evolving embryonic mass.
These blastodermic strata consist of the ectoderm, the
mesoderm and the hypoderm, which, in continuing the
developmental changes, lose their, more or less, parallel
cellular arrangement, and assume the character of histo-
logically formed structures, in which they ultimately
become converted into the embryonic formation, known
as the neurenteric canal and adventitial textures.
232
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
This developmental change, marks a great advance, on
the preceding stages of embryonic evolution, and allows of
the commencement of those further structural arrangements,
which permit of the addition of the greatest materio-
Fig. 93.— Sections of the ovum of the rabbit during the later
stages of segmentation, showing the formation of the
blastodermic vesicle. (E. v. Beneden.)
a, section showing the enclosure of entomeres by ectomeres except at one spot — the
blastopore ; b, more advanced stage in which fluid is beginning to accumulate
between entomeres and ectomeres, the former completely enclosed ; c, the fluid
has much increased, so that a large space separates entomeres from ectomeres
except at one part ; d, blastodermic vesicle, its wall formed of a layer of ecto-
dermic cells, with a patch of entomeres adhering to it at one part ; z.p , ect., ent.,
as before.
dynamic change of all, a change in virtue of which, the
whole embryonic structures become innervated by two
related, independent, and co-ordinated, nervous systems,
in addition to that unicellular innervation, which has con-
tinued to do duty since the unicellular amalgamation of
the parental protoplasms, and which still continues sub-
DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION
Z33
servient to the materio-dynamic necessities of the two
great nervatures.
In virtue of these latter additions to the mechanisms,
and agencies of embryonic life, further developmental
progress follows, with constantly increasing degrees of
advancement in structural complexity and functional
attainment, comprising the rudiments of the brain, cord,
and nerves, and a bond of union between these, and the
presiding sympathetic nervous system, which, until now,
Fig. 94.
Fig. 95.
j>r
Fig. 94.— Pyriform transparent area of thk chick's blastoderm
with the primitive groove.
pr, primitive streak and groove ; of, amniotic fold commencing ; the darker shading
round the primitive streak indicates the extension of the mesoblast.
Fig. 95. — Embryonic area from the ovum of a rabbit of eight
days. -2j2. (From Kolliker.)
arg, border of the embryonic area ; pr, primitive streak with groove.
has met all the requirements of a general nervous system
and determining agent, in the work of developmental
evolution.
Now comes a momentous period in the history of
embryonic advancement, when the foundation, of the
future systemic nervous system, is laid in the posterior
and half of the neurenteric canal, and when the division of
the canal into two takes place, and its anterior division is
converted into the alimentary and respiratory systems,
of viscera and organs, and, inasmuch, as this great process
of structural and functional, differentiation is accompanied,
234
BIOLOCtICAL physics
and followed by the dovetailing, inter-penetrating and
blending of the whole of the systemic and sympathetic,
nervine and non-nervine, structural elements, respectively,
into one organic whole, in which all are correlated and
co-ordinated, for systemic ends, and purposes, while struc-
tural and functional individuality is maintained, for local
ends and purposes.
Fig. 96. — Surface view of the transparent area of a blastoderm
OF 18 HOURS, SOMEWHAT DIAGRAMMATIC. (From Balfour.)
pr, primitive groove, closed in front by the coalescence of the two lateral ridges ; 7>ic,
medullary groove, having on each side the medullary folds or ridges, A, which
also meet in front to enclose the groove, but diverge behind so as to enclose the
primitive streak ; in front the fold of the amnion is commencing.
During this momentous period, the systemic nervature
inserts itself into the structural area, innervated by the
sympathetic nervature, while the sympathetic nervature
actually produces and innervates the whole of the textures
out of which the systemic nervature is evolved, as well as,
the interstitial textures of the muscular, and osseous,
systems, with which it is continuous in texture, and
function.
The systemic nervous system (Fig. 97), including
brain, cord and nerves, is the crowning product of
developmental evolution, and, therefore, its every necessity
DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION
235
is most elaborately provided for, anatomically and
physiologically, even to the physical extent that it is
universally surrounded and interpenetrated by a fluid
medium (Figs. 98, 99), in which it floats, free from the
exigencies of an ever-changing environment, and sustained,
by a series of anatomical structures of a marvellously
perfect order, subservient to its every requirement, and
Fig. 97.— Brain and spinal cord exposed from behind in a foztus
of three months. (From Kolliker.)
h, the hemispheres ; mr, the mesencephalic vesicle or corpora quadrigemina, c, the
cerebellum ; below this are the medulla oblongata, mo, and fourth ventricle, with
remains of the membrana obturatoria. The spinal cord, s, extends to the lower
end of the sacral canal, and presents the brachial and crural enlargements.
amenable, to some degree, to the control of the will,
when it becomes perfectly evolved.
The organs of sense are placed in the most favourable
positions to secure information from the external world,
and supplied with receptive organs, capable of receiving
information from all points, and from all forms of material,
and energy, and conveying them, in the most specialised
forms, through appropriate neural channels, to the sen-
sorium within, when it, in turn, becomes fully evolved.
At this early period, moreover, are provided the " ways
and means," by which the vis medicatrix nature is enabled
to maintain a hygienic condition of the systemic nervature,
236
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
as well as of its sympathetic partner; as an example of that
provision, there is established a system of discharging,
from within the systemic nervine structures, the results of
IV.V
Fig. 98. — Lateral view of the brain of an embryo calf of 5 cm.
(From Balfour, after Mihalkovics.)
The outer wall of the left hemisphere is removed to show the interior of the lateral
ventricle ; /is, cut wall of the hemisphere ; st, corpus striatum ; am. hippocampus
major; ^choroid plexus of ventricle; fm, foramen of Monro; op, optic tract;
in, infundibulum ; mb, mid-brain; cb, cerebellum; iv.v, roof of fourth ventricle;
ps, pons Varolii ; with fifth nerve and Gasserian ganglion.
structural " tear and wear," and, so, of maintaining a con-
dition of intra-cerebro-neural health and material sweetness,
of the whole nervature.
Fig. 99. — Brain of the human embryo of three months. Natural
size. (From Kolliker. )
In 1 the view is from above, the upper part of the cerebral hemispheres and mesence-
phalon having been removed. f, fore part of the divided wall of the hemisphere ;
/', hind part of the same which becomes the hippocampus turned in ; est, corpus
striatum ; tho, thalamus opticus.
In 2 the lower surface is represented ; to, tractus opticus ; and in front of this the
olfactory bulbs and tracts ; cm, single mass of the corpora mammillaria not yet
divided ; p, pons Varolii. The cerebellum and medulla oblongata, mo, are seen
behind and to the sides in both figures.
These " ways and means " we have already described at
some length, so we here, only recall attention to the double
processes of differentiation and union which take place
simultaneously at the posterior and anterior extremities,
of the neurenteric canal. Thus, at the anterior extremity
DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION 237
while the posterior is undergoing a metamorphic change,
by which the lumen of the canal is being occluded by the
deposition of connective tissues, previous to cerebro-spinal
excretional discharge, through the line of differentiation,
and secured by the highly developed coccygeal glandular
receptacle and exit vasculature — a mutual approach
(see Figs. 30, 32), of the two anterior terminal ends of the
neurenteric canal, is taking place ; the buccal cavity and
the floor of the mid brain extending themselves towards
each other until they have become absolutely contiguous,
when their respective tissues cohere, and become conjointly
encapsulated, whereby is produced, the structure, or organ,
known to anatomists as the pituitary gland (see Fig. 32), a
structure which is supposed to be functionless, and which
from time to time has had various, somewhat fantastic,
duties, assigned to it. These assignments of function it
is not now necessary to refute, but it is necessary, that we
should claim, for this developmental production, a function
of the highest order, that any bodily structure can lay
claim to, viz. that of providing an antero-central outlet for
the drainage of the great central cerebral organ, the brain. In
claiming for it this most important vital duty, we base our
opinion on its essential anatomical structure and histo-
logical characteristics, which are those of a true gland, its
simultaneous, provision and opening, with that of occlusion,
of the posterior-inferior end of the neurenteric canal, the
provision of structural developmental materials for the
establishment of circulatory facilities between the buccal
cavity and the cerebral cavity, at the earliest period neces-
sary for the regulation of intra-cerebral pressure, the facts,
that a cartilaginous, and then an osseous, foundation (see
Figs. 33, 34, 35,36)1 are produced for its support, and inde-
pendent existence, as one of the first acts of solidification,
and ossification of the future skeleton, and the absolute
necessity, for the preservation of the hygiene of the intra-
cranial structures, of an outflow mechanism, capable of
meeting the requirements of the central cerebral organs,
and inter-meningeal spaces, as these requirements, by the
process of developmental necessities, come into existence.
During the period of foetal changes and development,
great variations are effected in the completeness with
238 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
which the systemic and sympathetic nervatures are
mutually intermixed and related, so that, when the
independent existence, is attained, the systemic nervous
system is able to take up the duty of learning how to
carry out the work of a voluntarily superintended, and,
more or less intellectually directed, organism.
As this process of, foetal and infantile learning, goes
on, the growing, and developing, organism, undergoes a
process of structural perfecting, by which it is, more and
more, prepared to carry out the increasing working
necessities of the growing intellect, until a state of
material maturity is attained, after which, it may be, that
the intellect continues to develop, until its material
foundations begin to crumble, and decay.
Meantime, during the periods of youth, adult age, and
senile decay, the material organism is able, with more or
less success, to meet all the requirements of the pre-
dominant partner, by virtue of the possession of the
truly wonderful development of evolutionary devices,
structural adaptations and functional facilities procured ;
as, for example, in that developmental device just men-
tioned, when the systemic nervature was united, by direct
glandular and vascular continuity with the alimentary
canal, and where, it will be remembered, the buccal cavity,
with its lining mucosa, was uplifted into the cranial cavity,
and secured, by common encapsulation, to the most
dependent central cerebral prolongation, the infundibulum,
thereby affording, an outlet from the cranial cavity, by
which the work of its drainage could be obtained.
This device is truly one of the most remarkable in the
history of the developmental evolution of the human
organism, and attracts every day to its manner of
working and its functional position in the economy of
neural, excretion, alimentation, and digestion, an uncon-
scious attention, both lay, and professional, beyond that
given to any other part of the economy, for here the
mouth, the tongue and the throat, are alike concerned,
in the experience of every individual, more or less ; and
in the light of what has been already advanced, in con-
nection with the subject, it is bound to become a consciously
valuable possession in the everyday experience of every
DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION
239
Internal carotid artery.
Foramen lacerum medium.
— Cartilage of Eustachian tube.
Cavity of Eustachian tube.
Levator palati.
Inferior turbinated bone.
Lateral recess of pharynx.
Levator cushion.
Superior constrictor muscle.
Glands in soft palate.
Uvula.
Palatopharyngeus.
Circumvallate papillae.
Sulcus terminalis.
Glossopharyngeal nerve.
Foramen caecum.
Lymphoid follicle.
Middle constrictor muscle.
Epiglottis.
Pharyngo-epiglottic fold.
Lingual artery.
Hyoglossus muscle.
Hyoid bone.
Superior laryngeal artery.
Internal laryngeal nerve.
Aryteno-epiglottic fold.
Sinus pyriformis.
Superior aperture of larynx.
Inferior constrictor muscle.
Top of cricoid cartilage.
Fig. 100.— The anterior wall of the pharynx with its orifices,
seen from behind.
The specimen from which the drawing was made was obtained from a formalin-
hardened body by removing the posterior wall of the pharynx while leaving the
anterior wall undisturbed. The following points should be noted : the greatest
width of the pharynx, above, at the lateral recesses ; the posterior nares, with the
inferior turbinated bones seen through them ; the levator cushion ; and the
pharyngeal portion of the tongue.
24o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
member of the healing art, and the intelligent layman,
who takes pains fully to acquaint himself with the nature
of the information it conveys. The mucosa of the whole
buccal (Fig. ioo) cavity, with the structures which it
covers, is, more or less, active, in the functional work of
cerebral excretion, more or less, modified lines of exit,
continuing to maintain that excretional function, first
established by the direct union of the buccal and
cerebral, cavities, at the antero-central aspect of the
nascent cerebrum.
These local structural lines of exit may be likened to
those of a sponge, which, on being squeezed, by every
act of deglutition, conscious, or unconscious, and every
movement of the tongue, empty themselves into the
mouth, relieving the outflow vasculature, and, secondarily,
assisting in the work of digestion, and alimentation, thus
contributing to the double function of secretion, and
excretion, and aiding in the economy of the great nutri-
tional activities of the body at the same time.
Such are a few of the steps of the organic developmental
evolution of the human organism, and they may suffice to
show the absolute continuity of the process, the constant
adaptation of means to ends, the survival of the fittest,
in texture and organ, and the culmination in attainable
perfection, of both structure and function, but with the
inexorable final result of material, textural involution,
decay and death.
Contemporarily with this process of organic develop-
mental evolution, moreover, a higher, or psycho- dynamic,
evolution is being effected, whereby the growth of the,
ego, inner man, or intellectual being, is secured, in har-
mony with the various stages of advancement characterising
that organic developmental evolution.
The rudiments of psychic being begin to manifest
themselves in very early infancy, rapidly increase as the
period of lactation advances, continue active during the
period of childhood, gather strength during the " acquire-
ment of education " and merge into full intellectual
development during the succeeding years, increasing, as
" knowledge of the world " becomes added to the mental
furniture.
DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION 241
Along with these mental evolutionary changes is being
added, as the last and highest developmental change, in
the whole category of human evolutionary events, viz.
the production, growth and development of moral
character and attributes, which being the last product of
human developmental evolution, and the final stage of
dynamic change, in the innermost nature of man, becomes
the concluding and essential, event in that long series
constituting the whole "life of man," comprising, material,
intellectual, and moral.
EXTRACT XXII.
ON THE NOTOCHORD, AS A SKELETAL EVOLU-
TIONARY FACTOR.
What does the term notochord signify ? No answer to
that question has yet been vouchsafed to the most
" anxious inquirer," and the subject has to a great extent
been "shelved," or "hung up," waiting the advent of a
suitable time, and circumstances propitious, for the con-
sideration of questions considered devoid of all possible
practical advantage, but which may have an element of
possible scientific interest, sufficient to excite a " passing
notice." In the latter aspect of the subject, we feel called
upon to take it up, in order, if possible, to throw some
light, if it be only that of curiosity, upon it.
To begin with, the history of its discovery is, so far as
we have been able to make out, comparatively recent and
has consisted of its topographical delimitation and the
recognition of its anatomical details, all of which is highly
informative to the student of embryonic structure and
valuable, as a " find," to the collectors of anatomical
archaeology and evolutionary survivals, but it does not
satisfy even mere curiosity, we therefore, feel impelled to
soliloquise for a little on its probable meaning, after, for
some time, regarding it as intently, as we have been able,
from the various aspects reachable from our individual
points of view. In attempting an explanation of its
nature, we would observe that its embryonic advent
seems, to us, to anticipate the process of skeletal building,
and to synchronise with the erection of the scaffolding, so
to speak, by the formative factors, in the great work of
ON THE NOTOCHORD
243
growth and development, or evolution, of the human
organism ; it is a structure, therefore, of an ephemeral
order, which, when its developmental services are no
longer required, is relegated to that class of " survivals,"
which now has assumed, a more or /ess, " recognised
Fig. ioi.
Fig. 102.
Fig. ioi. — Cervical part of the primitive vertebral column and
adjacent parts of an embryo chick of the sixth day, showing
the division of the vertebral segments. (From Kolliker after
Remak.)
1. 1, chorda dorsalis in its sheath, pointed at its upper end ; 2, points by three lines
to the original intervals of the primitive vertebrae; 3, in a similar manner indi-
cates the places of new division into permanent bodies of vertebrae ; c, indicates
the body of the first cervical vertebra ; in this and the next the primitive division
has nearly disappeared, as also in the two lowest represented, viz. d, and the one
above ; in those intermediate the line of division is shown ; 4, points in three
places to the vertebral arches ; and 5, similarly to three commencing ganglia ot
the spinal nerves : the dotted segments outside these parts are the muscular plates.
Fig. 102. — Transverse section of early embryo of pristiurus
(elasmobranchs). (From Balfour.)
nc, neural canal ; pr, posterior root of spinal nerve ; x, subnotochordal rod ; ao, aorta ;
sc, parietal mesoblast ; sp, visceral mesoblast ; »>p, muscle-plate ; nip' t portion of
muscle-plate converted into muscle ; Vv, portion of the vertebral plate which will
give rise to the vertebral bodies ; al, alimentary canal.
position, " in our scientific structural classifications and
nomenclature.
From its position, as to time of appearance as a fully-
formed anatomical element (Figs, ioi, 102, 103), amid
the teeming array of rapidly evolving structures, and
functions, we would " naturally " suppose that it must
have a very important duty, or bearing, as well as, from
its central, and evidently determining, localisation, on the
244 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
process of, embryonic, as well as, foetal, development.
Thus, it appears, when the process of differentiation of
the neurenteric canal becomes effected, by posterior
division, and anterior union, or by the development of
the coccygeo-anal, and pituitary, metamorphic, separating,
and uniting, mechanisms, or organisms ; it culminates dur-
ing the formation of the vertebral column (Figs. 103, 104);
and declines in prominence, as that part of the skeleton
reaches the stage of advanced, if not completed, ossifica-
tion, in its formation ; and persists, until the vertebral
Fig. 103.— Transverse section of an embryo rabbit of 9 days and
2 HOURS IN the middle dorsal region. if& (From Kolliker.)
«r, medullary tube ; uw, protovertebral mass ; h, epiblast ; hp, parietal mesoblast ;
dfpy visceral division of the mesoblast; p/>, pleuro-peritoneal cavity between them ;
ungj primitive segmental duct \g, vessels in the visceral mesoblast ; ch, notochord;
dr, intestinal groove of the hypoblast.
centres have progressed to the full extent of their peri-
pheral boundaries, and have assumed their proper position
in the structure of the fully-developed spinal column, when
it begins to decline in prominence of anatomical features,
and shrinks into the condition of a survival of itself.
What, we ask ourselves, does all this suggest ? It
suggests that the notochord, at this period of embryonic
development, is performing a most important function in
the economy of growth and evolution of the embryonic
formation skeletal structures, and from its intimate
relationship, at its anterior extremity, with the process of
differentiation, or rather union, of the already divided
extremities of the neurenteric canal, it receives from that
canal and its proper, neuro-mural, or structural, elements,
ON THE NOTOCHORD
245
earthy or ossific material to distribute to distant developing
chordal textures, whereby they can undergo the common
process of growth, then so active everywhere throughout
the embryonic organism ; we, therefore, would regard it,
as a vascular mechanism, or vehicle, whose function — a
temporary one — ceases with the arrival of the more
advanced fcetal condition, when the necessity for its
Fig. 104.— Sections of the vertebral column of a human fcstus
of eight weeks. (From Kolliker.)
A, transverse longitudinal section of several vertebrae. 1, 1, chorda dorsalis, its
remains thicker opposite the intervertebral discs ; 2, is placed on one of the bodies
of the permanent vertebrae ; 3, on one of the intervertebral discs.
B, transverse horizontal section through a part of one dorsal vertebra. 1, remains of
the chorda dorsalis in the middle of the body ; 2, arch of the vertebra ; 3, head
of a rib.
existence no longer continues ; and this latter stage
would seem to be reached when the ossification of the
various units of the vertebral column has been effected
to that extent, which yields a stable, protection and
support to the developing brain and spinal cord, and
which then allows its future nutritional economy to be
developed, on the ordinary lines of growth, to the stage,
of self-supporting efficiency and organic independence.
If this be so, and we regard it as developmentally
reasonable, and suitable, in the circumstances, we should
246
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
suppose that the materials entrusted to the notochord
for nutritive disposal, consist of, amongst others, the
inorganic, or more mineral, elements of bone structure,
which it deposits, for metabolic purposes, in the sym-
pathetically constructed fibro-cellular foundation elements,
or centres of ossification, of the future individual vertebrae,
as well as, for the growth, and development, of all the
continuous textural extensions and terminal distributions
associated therewith, or proceeding therefrom.
c7i
Fig. 105. — Diagram to show the position of the enlargements of
the notochord in passing through the vertebral column.
Half the natural size. (After Kolliker, A. T.)
ch, notochord ; i, bodies of two vertebrae ; iv, intervertebral plate with the wide
enlargement of the notochord ; bn, ossific nucleus of the bodies of the vertebrae;
e, slight dilatations of the notochord opposite the epiphysial plates.
The reason of the structure in question lapsing at
this stage of organic evolution is, that it ceases to occupy
the position of an active, vehicular, or vascular, structure,
and, like such unemployed ducts as the thyro-glossal,
fails to attract further notice. During the period of
its functional activity, or before the nutrition of bone,
generally, is effected by periosteal agency, we have the
materials, for the growth of bone, carried to the bodies
of the future vertebras by notochordal means, and their
ossification in advance secured, in preparation for the laying
ON THE NOTOCHORD 247
down of the fundamental structures of the future systemic
nervous system.
In this earliest skeletal development, we see in full
activity, the membranous, and cartilaginous, methods,
of ossification (Fig. 105), in order to overtake the much
required developmental work of providing, at the earliest
period, both external and internal means, of organic
support and protection, before the usual factors for
permanent osseous structures have been laid down, or
come into existence, and it is most remarkable and
suggestive to find that these phenomena are displayed
in connection with the nascent systemic nerve centres,
where the basi-sphenoid cartilages are developing, round,
Fig. 106.— White fibro-cartilage from an intervertebral disk
(human). Highly magnified. (E. A. S.)
The concentric lines around the cells indicate the limits of deposit of successive cap-
sules. One of the cells has a forked process which extends beyond the hyaline
area surrounding the cell, amongst the fibres of the general matrix.
and under, the central brain structures, and the vertebral
bodies, under, and in front of, the developing spinal
cord.
The notochord may, thus, be compared to an internal
periosteum, and, therefore, we may correctly call it the
end-osteum of the vertebral column, as it traverses its
united textural units, carrying their earthy nutritive
elements, as long as it is necessary for it to do so, and
disappearing, into anatomical obscurity, on the establish-
ment of other, and permanent, means, of carrying on,
its hitherto essential, vehicular work. Thus employed,
it bridges over a period in the process of skeletal growth,
when the periosteal structures of the skeleton, generally,
are in course of evolution, and, of course, before the
period at which protection and support are absolutely
necessary for securing the growth, and evolution, of the
future systemic nerve organs, the brain, and spinal cord.
248 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Its position, in relation to the developing vertebrae,
assumes a central course, which it continues to maintain,
after it has ceased to perform an active functional work,
and is found surviving even in adult life ; it is, therefore,
one of those structural survivals, about which it is
not too much to say, that, it is conceivable, it may
have to do with functional revivals, physiological, or
pathological, such as we have claimed for the thyro-
glossal duct, in relation to the etiology of some cases
of goitre.
Moreover, we would draw attention to the resemblance
of the function, we have assigned to this embryonic
structure, to that usually assigned to the periosteum of
the bones, constituting the other parts of the skeleton
{i.e. excepting the bones, to which the notochord conveys
ossific matter during its active existence), in the physio-
logical process involved in the formation of callus, between,
and around, the ends of fractured bones, during their
course of " knitting," and restoration to complete, if not
exact, continuity of texture. Here, it would seem to
us, that a large portion of the callus, if not all, is of
nervine origin, in which respect it exactly resembles the
ossifying material, deposited from the notochord amid
the centres of ossification of the individual vertebras,
and that it is deposited from the ruptured periosteal,
and fractured bone, structures, and licked into organic
form by the inter-penetrating and omnipresent, sympa-
thetic nervature.
From this it would appear, that the systemic nervature
is responsible for a large proportion of the growth, and
nutrition, of all the structures subservient to its voluntary
control, and that it, therefore, seems no longer strange
to meet with cartilaginous, or osseous, deposits, not only
in immediate relationship to the proper skeleton, but
throughout the whole organism, wherever the systemic
nerve structures are distributed.
Like neuroma, which is an accumulation, in the neuri-
lemmar sheaths, of the white substance of Schwann,
disconnected deposits, or growths, of cartilage, or
bone, found up and down the body, are arrested
osseous, and, more or less, organised, materials, due
ON THE NOTOCHORD 249
to stasis of systemic nerve circulation of these materials>
from physiological, or pathological, circumstances, and
factors.
The notochord, thus, becomes the prime agent in
securing the embryonic safety of the nascent, and develop-
ing, elements, of the systemic nervous system, in respect,
especially, of the great central organs of brain and cord,
and in providing the central support, for the subsequent
development of the thoracic, and pelvic, arches, and their
attached limb continuations, certainly, a functional raison
d'etre of the utmost importance to the embryonic
organism, and of no less prospective importance, in
the future development of the growing, and maturing
organism.
All which is, no doubt, highly speculative, but abso-
lutely deducible from the, embryological, histological
and physiological, data, of which we have become
possessed, and which we have utilised to our own
satisfaction, in elucidating themes, and formulating
opinions, in other, but kindred, regions, lying imme-
diately outside of absolutely proved, and orthodox,
doctrine, and teaching ; we, therefore, make no apology
for obtruding such views, on the attention of those
capable of appraising them at their proper value.
As a vascular, or vehicular, structure, it is not capable
of circulating its contents in the ordinary sense of the
word, inasmuch, as it has no proper outfall mechanism,
so far as yet known, and no return vasculature, to re-deliver
its residual and acquired, contents, to its original source
of supply ; it may, therefore, be regarded as a canal, into
which, percolates, or finds its way, the ossific material
destined for the future vertebral bodies, and to the
evolved rudiments of which it communicates, by osmosis,
what it has to yield, at regular stages along its lumen,
until it has emptied itself and become, so to speak, dried
up, or, in reality, evacuated.
The notochord is one of the earliest structural
dispositions of the blastodermic fundamental layers,
synchronising in time of development, and running
parallel in position, with the neural canal, which it
apparently finally joins at, or in, the hypophysis, where
250 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the buccal cavity is brought into relationship with the
cerebral vesicles.
When this triple junction of structures and included
intra-spaces, becomes fully established, the shrinkage, and
involution of the notochord, begins, which seems to
mean, that the material, hitherto deflected along the
lumen of the notochord, becomes finally deflected,
through the anterior lobe of the now encapsuled pituitary
gland, into the buccal cavity, the direction which it is
destined permanently to take, as a means of keeping
open, a communication between the cavities of the brain
and alimentary canal, and, so of securing the drainage of
the skull, and its nervine contents, in perpetuity.
Moreover, when such a disease as acromegaly ensues,
and when we look about for a reasonable etiology of such
an enigmatic condition, we are persuaded, we shall find it
in a perversion, of the " state of things," brought about by
the above-mentioned triple circulatory embryonic arrange-
ment ; thus, the material circulated by the notochord,
and distributed by it to the ossifying vertebrae, contains
ossific, and developmental, elements, which, on its func-
tional exhaustion, are turned into the pituitary organism
for disposal, and should find their way into the pharynx.
This material, on the advent of acromegaly, is dammed
back by, it may be, the disorganised pituitary excretionary
structures, and has to find its way, along the lines of least
resistance, leading from the site of excretionary arrest,
and, subsequently, and consequently, into the terminal
extensions of both the efferent, and afferent systemic
nervatures, where it produces the characteristic, osseous
and cutaneous, enlargements, the pituitary body being the
fons et origo of the whole sequence of morbid events, by
an unbroken continuity of occurrences. Moreover, the
reputed tendency, for bones which have been simul-
taneously fractured, and had their attached muscles
deprived of systemic innervation, to remain ununited,
is explained, by the incidence of, what we would designate,
the law of nutritive continuity between, nerve, muscle,
periosteum, and bone, having been violated in its nervine
links, or compartments.
In comparison with the notochord, both in structure,
ON THE NOTOCHORD 251
and function, although a matter of altogether vegetable
bearing, we cannot forbear calling attention to the pith of
plants, a ligneous element, which seems to perform in the
process of plant life and growth, a very similar function
to that of the notochord in animal embryonic life, convey-
ing to the distal buds from the earth, we think, the
inorganic, or earthy, salts, and other materials, for the
solidification of ligneous tissue, while the more aqueous,
and organic are conveyed up the exterior in the sap
proper. Of course the pith of plants is a permanent,
and not an ephemeral structure, and continues annually^
or perennially^ to perform its vital functions of circulation
and lignification.
We seem here, in embryonic life, to be face to face
with problems, involving the conjoint action, of both the
sympathetic, and systemic, nervatures, not only on their
material aspects, but on their dynamic ; so that we have
the play, in the accomplishment of the phenomena referred
to, of four factors, two material, and two dynamic, viz.
the sympathetic, material, and dynamic, neuro-circulatory,
each of which is called upon to act individually, and
communally, for the accomplishment of common organic
objects. Necessarily, therefore, the partnership working
out of the problems in question entails very complicated
methods, of formative, and reparative, procedure, but
when the physiological compact is capable of straight-
forward accomplishment, the various factors, mutually,
and spontaneously, assist each other, so that finally, what
had seemed an impossible work, is accomplished with the
utmost, ease and precision.
Thus, the material lines having been determined upon,
and laid down, the dynamic factors lick into shape the
mutual material contributions of the two systems, and
evolve organic order, out of what may have appeared
chaos, as when — in the case of bone fracture, callus has
been contributed from all sources in the scene of the
traumatic area — it becomes necessary, for the accomplish-
ment of the one object, of attaining the condition of the
status quo ante, for both systems to put forth their accu-
rately guided dynamic efforts, for the common purpose of
securing a physiological, and avoiding a pathological result.
252 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Likewise, in the development of the nascent vertebral
column, the foundation plan, and materials, have been
determined upon, and laid down, by the evolving sym-
pathetic nervature, antecedent to the appearance of the
nascent systemic nervature, which, when it has attained
the requisite degree of development, diverts the necessary
materio-dynamic elements into the notochordal texture,
to accomplish the ossification of the bodies of the future
vertebrae, and to ensure a stable foundation being con-
structed for the fully developed systemic nervature. On
both these procedures follows, the removal, or involution,
of the no longer required, reparative, or constructive,
materials, as residual elements, as should always follow on
the lapse of function, in order to leave no nidus, or
nucleus, on which the agencies of disease can seize, and
convert, to pathogenic uses, therefore, absorption ensues,
in the one, and shrinkage, in the other, until, physio-
logically, their presence is known no more.
Along with the physiological working out of these
problems, unfortunately, pathological presences may "turn
up " on the scene, such as rheumatism et hoc genus otnne,
when, what has been a process of " plain sailing," becomes
one of " tacking, and turning," until the vis medicatrix
nature succeeds in thwarting the intentions of the enemy,
and restoring order.
In regard to the very early appearance, in the embryonic
structural economy, of the notochord, as a definitely
organised element, and its subsequent all but complete
disappearance, we are persuaded, more and more, that it
subserves one of the most important, formative, or
developmental, purposes ; more especially, as we have
said, in connection with the process of ossification, and
the formation of that part of the skeleton, which is
destined to, continue, and protect the central structures
of the systemic nervous system ; thus, up to the time of
its appearance, no indication of the skeletal tissue has
manifested itself, and nothing, but the most rudimentary
indication, of neuro-muscular development, which,
according to our views of the nutritional functions of the
notochord, precludes the possibility of ossification taking
place from it, at that formative juncture ; what more
ON THE NOTOCHORD 253
essential then than that a temporary developmental pro-
cedure, or expedient, should take place, and a temporary
organism be provided, to meet the temporary organic
occasion ? And this is, neither more nor less, than what
takes place under the circumstances, by the evolution of
the structure known as the notochord. In this temporary
developmental procedure, we, therefore, claim, that a great
materio-dynamic problem has been carried out, by which
formative difficulties, otherwise insurmountable, have been
overcome, and the first step forward been taken, in the
production of a vertebrate and skeletally possessed,
animal.
In the provision made for the purpose, we see a tem-
porary ductiform structure laid down from the anterior
end of the neural canal, from which we conclude is
drained off, from the contents of that canal, the earthy
salts, necessary for effecting the ossification of the future
vertebral bodies, the percolation of them into the fibro-
cellular matrix of these bodies, and the subsequent carti-
laginous consolidation, and ossification, of them, followed
by involution, and very slight survival of the temporary
structure.
After the development of the neuro-musculature, the
process of ossification, and skeletal nutrition, are effected
through the joint agency, of nerve, muscle, and inter-
mediate, or uniting musculoskeletal, textures, tendonous,
and periosteal.
Lime, among other earthy ingredients of living proto-
plasm, becomes, thus, separated from its physiological
companionship with the other plasmic elements, and is
transmitted, by means of notochordal circulation, to effect
a new mode of union with these elements, by being, as it
were, strown amongst them, to give them the property of
solidity, and the consequent power of resistance, and
adaptability to the structural necessities of the growing
organism, in its evolution of an articulate skeleton —
lime, thus, once more asserting itself, as one of the most
essential elements in nature, as well as one of the most
widely distributed.
It is, thus, most remarkable, that earthy matter is
separated from the sympathetically innervated organic
254 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
elements, by the nascent systemic-nervature, and reintro-
duced into the sympathetically innervated vertebral bodies,
with the result, that an organic precipitation, as it were,
takes place in the process of ossification, illustrating, once
more, the continuous existence of circulation within
circulation.
EXTRACT XXIII.
ON OSSIFICATION, AND THE SKELETON.
Ossification, as an embryonic and early fcetal, his-
tological process, begins, after the differentiation of the
neurenteric canal, and the early evolution of the structures,
springing from the areas, respectively innervated by the
sympathetic and systemic nervous systems, and pro-
gresses, in the first instances, mainly by cartilaginous
modes of solidification, of certain definite points, or small
areas, of, the then, entirely soft tissues, such as, the bases
of the future units of the vertebral column, and the basi-
sphenoid, para-chordal and trabecular, cartilages.
This earliest example of the process synchronises with
the appearance, and functional activity of the notochord,
and seems due to the distribution of earthy material — lime
salts especially — by that, then, prominent embryonic
structure, to the fibro-cellular matrix of the future
vertebral bodies, and spheno-chordal basal tissues — the
physical union of the two skeletal evolutionary elements,
protoplasmic, and earthy, their structural solidification, as
cartilage, and their subsequent conversion into bone, by
absolute ossification, following as the terminal result.
When this earliest skeletal provision has become effected
to the extent, that the future systemic neuro-musculature,
can obtain sufficient support, solid points of attachment,
and protection, to develop itself throughout the areas of
sympathetic innervation, the process of ossification is
repeated, at points corresponding with what are called
" centres of ossification," throughout the whole skeletal
areas of the, calvarium, body and limbs of the developing
256
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
foetus, by neuro-muscular plasma, provided from the
central, or systemic, nervous system, through the axonal
processes of its various neurons, which seem to repeat, on
mmmmmmm
*m$- ^ ,.'iw
Fig. 107.— Ideal plan of the multiplication of cells of
cartilage. (Sharpey.)
A, cell in its capsule ; B, divided into two, each with a capsule ; C, primary capsule
disappeared, secondary capsules coherent with matrix ; D, tertiary division ; E,
secondary capsules disappeared, tertiary coherent with matrix.
the same lines, the ossificatory proceedings of the early
notochord, each neuron carrying, or sending, to its appro-
priate osseous centre of attachment and distribution, the
5 g c
F ig. 108.— Division of a cartilage cell. (Schleicher.)
a-h, stages of division of a cell, as seen in the living cartilage of the salamander (the
connection of the nucleoplasmic filaments could not be made out in the fresh con-
dition), a, 6, stellate phase ; c, equatorial pha«e ; d, commencing separation of
the nucleoplasmic filaments ; the further stages of separation are not represented ;
e, filaments fully separated into two groups, and a septum beginning to be formed
between them ; /, septum completed, seen to be double and continuous with cap-
sules of daughter cells ; g, k, further stages in the formation of the daughter nuclei.
requisite plasmic and earthy material, for the solidification,
and ossification, of the point, or area, to which it is
locally conveyed. Ossification is said to manifest itself in
two ways, or manners, viz. by (Figs. 107, 108) cartilage,
ON OSSIFICATION
257
and membrane (Figs. 109, no), but, to us it seems to
manifest itself in two degrees, viz. cartilaginous (see Fig.
107), and fully osseous (see Fig. 1 10), and that sometimes
it remains at the cartilaginous stage, as in the cartilages of
the ribs, the joints and air passages, where the property
of greater elasticity is retained, with the conferred skeletal
stiffening. Moreover, as age advances, a process of
Fig. 109. — Parietal bone of an embryo sheep. Size of the embryo,
n\ inches. (Sharpey.)
The small upper figure represents the bone of the natural size, the larger figure is
magnified about 12 diameters. The curved line a, b, marks the height to which
the subjacent cartilaginous lamella extended. A few insulated particles of bone
are seen near the circumference, an appearance which is quite common at this
stage.
stiffening is undergone by these cartilaginous structures,
and frequently there are laid down, nodules, or more
developed structures, in various localities by preference,
which undergo a series of structural changes, due to the
deposition in their matrix of earthy material, which
ultimately may lead to the development of a supplementary
skeleton, or detached osseous structures, the growth of
which is usually manifested along what we might call, the
258
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
natural evolutional lines, and by the natural evolutional
materio-dynamic machineries.
The occurrence of these ossificatory changes appears to
depend on the deposition, amid the neuro-plasmic
material, at some exposed, or degenerate, part, of its
circulatory surroundings, of the saline ingredients of the
accompanying cerebro-spinal lymph, which, then, and
there, initiate, and continue, the resolution of the com-
bined lympho-plasmic elements, into cartilaginous, or
Fig. iio.— Transverse section of compact tissue (of humerus).
Magnified about 150 diameters. (Sharpey.)
Three of the Haversian canals are seen, with their concentric rings; also the lacunae,
with the canaliculi extending from them across the direction of the lamellae. The
Haversian apertures had become filled with debris in grinding down the section,
and therefore appear black in the figure, which represents the object as viewed
with transmitted light.
osseous, tissue, in accordance with the character of the
structural environments, and the strength and continuance
of the ossific evolutionary process.
The nervous system, but more especially the systemic
motor nervature, seems to possess, within itself, the
materials, saline, or earthy, and plasmic, for the spon-
taneous development, when the formative conditions are
favourable, of cartilage, and bone, and, so, an explanation
is afforded of the scattered attempts at ossification, so
plentifully apparent in certain individuals, at certain times,
ON OSSIFICATION 259
and the necessity for the presence, of the systemic motor
nervature in fractures of the skeleton.
The notochord, therefore, becomes obsolete, when the
ossification of the vertebral column is complete, and then
undergoes a process of involution, ending in its almost
entire disappearance. Nevertheless, it is just possible,
that some obscure processes of osseous affections of the
vertebrae, may have some relationship, to this very slight
survival of its lumen, amid tissues functionally active.
When ossification of the general skeleton, apart from
the vertebral column, and the basi-sphenoid begins, we
are warranted in tracing its lines, along the continuous
histological developments comprising the neurons proper,
Fig. hi.— A bone-cell isolated and highly magnified.
(After Joseph.)
a, proper wall of the lacuna, shown at a part where the corpuscle has shrunk away
from it.
their axonal processes, the muscle plates and systemic
musculature, and the meso- and hypo-dermal textures, in
which these terminate, to which they become attached, as
the process of ossification proceeds, and with which they
become continuous, by tendonous insertion and periosteal
continuity with the skeletal matrix. Thus, the whole
structures innervated by the systemic nervous system,
ultimately become blended, and merged, into one systemic
whole, by complete histological continuity, nutritional
oneness, and functional inter-dependence, of all its parts,
neural, muscular and osseous, to the end, that the
systemic nervous system, is, or becomes, one and indivis-
ible, in all its elements, with the great sympathetically
innervated, surrounding, inter-penetrating, and supporting,
mass, of organic structures, and organs, the two systems,
260 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
thereby, being enabled to act individually, or conjointly,
according to the necessities, of one, or both, by absolutely
adjusted means, material and dynamic.
Ossification, viewed. thus, becomes the concluding link
in the chain of evolutionary processes, involved in the
growth of the human organism, from its original uni-
cellular protoplasmic elements, to its voluntary motile
condition — being the culminating skeletal " groundwork,"
on which is erected, the greatest organic superstructure
yet produced, in the meantime overshadowing, and
dwarfing, all others, however perfectly they may be
adapted, to their environment, and to carry out the
peculiar work of their individual and communal, destiny.
With an articulate and movable framework, a motive
machinery to bind together, and give it power of move-
ment, a dynamic agency to supply the energy, and a
regulative and administrative, consciousness, to guide its
conduct, the human organism, or machine, is capable of
performing work, of a higher character, than has been
attainable by the highest types of lower organisms, and,
apparently, a much higher still, than has yet been accom-
plished by the race, at, even, its most advanced periods of
civilisation.
EXTRACT XXIV.
ON LIGNIFICATION IN PLANTS AS COMPARED WITH
OSSIFICATION IN THE HUMAN ORGANISM.
Lignification, or the consolidation of vegetable tissue,
seems to have something in common with, ossification,
or the consolidation of animal tissue. Thus, as ossifi-
cation consists primarily of the invasion of certain struc-
tural areas of the nascent organism by earthy salts, the
union of these with the structural elements of those areas,
the hardening organisation, and ultimate consolidation, of
them, on definite skeletal lines, and, so, ultimately, the
conferring on the soft structures of a power, to attach
themselves to the resistant skeleton, and become, through
it, an articulate and moving, organism : so is lignification
a hardening organisation and ultimate consolidation of
vegetable protoplasm, by its union with earthy matter, in
definite fibro-cellular lines, along the stem, branches and
leaves, of the plant or tree. In the latter process we see
pretty much the same method of the union, or consolida-
tion, of the protoplasm, and earthy elements, in the
tissues of the plant, as we witness in the bodies of the
vertebras, through the instrumentality of the notochord
— the " pith," with the medullary rays, acting as the
vehicle of transference, from the soil, to the protoplasmic
cambium of the plant of the earthy elements, by which the
ligneous tissue becomes fully evolved, as a permanent
structure.
This necessitates two circulations, the one, passing up
the stem, inside its bark, the elements of vegetable proto-
plasm, while the other transmits, by way of the pith
262 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
channels, the medullary rays, and it may be the permanent
ligneous structure, the earthy salts held in solution, or
suspension, by the indispensable element of water. On
the passage of these two fluids through, the cambium, the
branch terminals and leaves, they become intermixed,
when the phenomena of lignification begin, and result, in
temporary, or permanent, additions, to the structure of
the plant, in the form of leaves, and increases in the
length, and girth, of the plant.
Towards the accomplishment of the process, the pro-
vision of pith channels and medullary rays, to a greater,
or lesser, extent, is universal, throughout the whole range
of, stem, and branches, while the whole external, or
peripheral, aspect of the plant, is the scene of one
continuous circulation, of sap proper, which, meeting with
earthy material, through the outer layer of the permanent
ligneous tissue, is the means of laying down, another, and
new, layer, and, so, of adding, year after year, to the
lateral extension of the plant, or tree, and, also, on the
admixture at the extremities of the branches, a more, or
less, large addition is made to their permanent length,
while a very large amount of highly developed, functional,
material, is shed, in the form of leaves.
EXTRACT XXV. a.
ON THE EMBRYONIC DIFFERENTIATION, OR DIVISION
AND REUNION, OF THE NEURENTERIC CANAL,
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ALIMENTARY
CANAL AND THE PROCESS OF DIGESTION.
The neurenteric canal is one of the earliest embryonic
arrangements of the organic elements of the blastoderm,
and is the outcome of the initial differentiation and
structural arrangements of its several parts, the con-
tinuation of which is ultimately to culminate, by the
organisation of the total of these primary organic elements,
in the fully developed body. The organisation of the
embryo, at the stage of development represented by the
V-shaped neurenteric canal, is necessarily most rudi-
mentary, but still complete enough to meet all the vital
requirements of the embryonic body, and to form the
developmental basis, on which is to be constructed, the
future alimentary, and neural, systems, and the organs
of the succeeding nascent organism with their constantly
increasing facilities for inter-action and co-operation, in
the performance of the complex functional work of the
fully developed body.
The division of the neurenteric tube into two — neural,
and enteric, — represents a great advance in embryonic
development, indicates the first step in the evolution of
a systemic nervous system, the dividing point, or line,
between sympathetically, and systemically, innervated,
creatures, and constitutes an entirely new departure from
the sequence of what, may be called, vegetative-life evo-
lutional phenomena.
264 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
The actual differentiation, and division, of the canal,
posteriorly, is accompanied by union at its anterior ends
in the pituitary body (see Figs. 30, 32), a provision of
the most important order in the future evolutional events
impending, in that long series constituting the life-history
of the human form, in its passage from the embryonic, to
the adult, condition.
The union of the anterior extremities of the neurenteric
canal, here effected by the junction of the neural and
buccal cavities, produces, or affords, an anterior means of
exit, to the fluid contents of the neural half of the canal,
when free disposal, or circulation, along the posterior
aspect is hindered, by the division and differentiation,
there, and there is no longer available, an untrammelled,
or unrestricted, condition, of patency — that being reduced
to the proportion of providing an exit for the coccygeal
residuum of the cerebro-spinal fluid. Division and
differentiation, of the two canals, having been fully
effected, and a start made in the development of their
future separate lumens, each becomes provided with a
structural machinery, capable of enabling it to perform
the functionary work, of an alimentary organ, and of a
systemic nervous system, respectively.
It seems, that during, and after, the completion of the
process of differentiation of the neurenteric canal, the
great functional work, of the entire body is being appor-
tioned to the two nervous systems, as they, and their
related textures, and organs, become evolved, and take
their place in the great organic commonwealth of the
completed and communal, organism. Thus, the vege-
tative, or organic, and lower physiological, work, is
delegated to the sympathetic nervous system, while the
voluntary, psychological, and higher, nervine, work, is
delegated to the systemic nervous system, a mixed, or
debatable, work, being performed by, one, or the other,
or both, in conjunction. It, moreover, seems from
physiological, and chemical, observation, warrantable to
assume, that the dual, or duplex, dynamic balance, hereby
necessitated, is maintained, by mutual exchange, and
transference, as well as limited and mutually secured
production of energy.
ON EMBRYONIC DIFFERENTIATION 265
In this way is obtained and maintained a physio-
logically even employment of the dual organisms, and
energies, a graduated activity of all parts of the organism,,
and a mean, or healthy, biological result, in other words a
mens sana in corpore sano — the desideratum of desiderata.
The anterior limb, of the neurenteric V, becomes
subservient to the purposes of the sympathetic nervous
system, the two limbs being united, and held together,
in their common work, by the inter-agency of a common
blood circulation.
In the following remarks on this subject, we shall deal
mostly with the enteric division of the canal. During
embryonic, and intra-uterine, existence, the range of func-
tional activity of the enteric canal, is necessarily restricted
to that, involved in its comparatively passive condition, of
preparation for the coming lactation duty, of digesting the
carefully elaborated, mammary secretion, and, therefore,
at birth, its contents are composed of only the exfoliated
residuum of organic waste, enteric, and neural. The
enteric canal, during this period, undergoes a gradual
evolution from a comparatively straight and plain tube,
into a multi-duplicated canal, the walls of which are inter-
penetrated and surrounded, by glandular developments,
and elaborate secreting organs, to fit it for the perform-
ance of the most complicated, and vital work, of digestion
and alimentation.
The enteric canal, anatomically, is divided, roughly
speaking, into mouth, oesophagus (Fig. 112), stomach,
and small, and large bowel (Fig. 113), each division being
structurally somewhat different, and functionally some-
what distinct, from the other, in accordance with the
physiological character of its specific contribution to the
common work. It is needless to say that every portion
of the canal, and so far as yet discovered, every accessory
structure, and organ, appertaining to it, is most perfectly
adapted for the performance of its individual office, and
unitedly, for the complete accomplishment of the great
functional work of preparing the raw alimentary materials
of our everyday diet, to meet the nutritive requirements
of our everyday life and work. Thus, the mouth, with
its masticatory, and insalivating, machinery, performs on
266
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the materials supplied to it by the selective instincts, and
prehensile organs of the individual, the initial work of
preparation, for gastric digestion and absorption, — besides
the procedure of mastication and insalivation, however, we
feel bound to contend that a still further and most
Fig. ii2.— Median section of the mouth and pharynx. (Sappey.)
i to 8, relate to parts in connection with the nostrils ; g, upper or respiratory part of
the pharynx; 10, aperture of the left Eustachian tube; it, depression of the
mucous membrane; 12, velum palati ; 13, 13, vestibulum oris; 14, arch of the
palate; 15, space at the back of the dental series; 16, 17, tongue; 18, genio-
glossus; 19, genio-hyoid ; 20, mylo-hyoid, cut; 21, 22, anterior and posterior
pillars of the fauces ; 23, tonsil ; 24, posterior vertical part of the tongue ; 25. its
glandular eminences and depressions ; 26, 27, lower part of the pharynx ; 28 to 37,
refer to parts of the larynx ; 30, epiglottis.
important, chemico-physiological, process, has to be gone
through, synchronously with these, by the alimentary
materials, the outcome of which, it is still premature to
attempt to estimate, or appraise, but the apparent influence
of which — proportioned to its extent, and incidence —
must be reckoned, as of very great extent and functional
ON EMBRYONIC DIFFERENTIATION 267
importance. The process here referred to is that of
admixture, of the raw alimentary materials, with the
lymphoid and colloid excretionary juices, exuding con-
stantly from the fauces and tongue, and consisting of
the pituitary excretion from the structures known as the
tonsils, lateral and central, the uvula, and the whole extent
Fig. 113.— Diagram of the abdominal part of the alimentary
CANAL. (Brinton.)
c, the cardiac, and p, the pyloric end of the stomach (this organ is represented in too
horizontal a position) ; D, the duodenum ; j, i, convolutions of the small intestine ;
cc, oecum, with the vermiform process ; AC, ascending, tc, transverse, and uc,
descending colon ; sf, sigmoid flexure ; k, rectum ; a, anus.
of the glosso-pharyngeal mucosa (see Figs. 100, 112).
It will, we think, become apparent, more and more, as
investigation of the subject progresses, that we have here
to deal with digestive factors and problems of no mean
importance arising from the physical admixture and
resultant chemical action and reaction of two very dis-
similar sets of substances, viz. of the excretionary, or
268 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
retrospective, results, of brain waste, and the pristine
elements of prospective nutrition.
We are warranted, in the meantime, we think, in
stating that not only have we to deal here with a digestive
phenomenon, but with an excretionary process of vital
importance in the economy of cerebration, with all that is
dependent upon the maintenance of the physiological con-
dition of the central nervous system. All this, of course,
being yet heterodox, we can only, tentatively, call the
attention of those who are in any way interested in, or
practically engaged with problems related to, the subject,
hoping that its possible scientific, and practical, bearings,,
will in time be fully realised.
The oesophagus (see Figs. 112, 113) is, in function
and structure, so far as yet discovered, vehicular, mainly,
that is to say, it is a tube, for the conveyance from the
pharynx to the stomach, of the masticated, insalivated and
-pituitarised^ food, although in certain physiological, and
pathological, pouched conditions, opportunities are afforded
for the elements of the food, to undergo chemico-physio-
logical changes, of a character dependent on pre-gastric
digestion.
The stomach (see Fig. 113), on the other hand, is an
adaptation of the lumen of the enteric canal to the require-
ments of a digestive viscus, which has given a specific
term, for use by the " man in the street," as well as the
most learned scientist, and which is in greater daily use>
than almost any other selected term that could be quoted.
It is the first of the long series of digestive viscera,
constituting the abdominal development of the intestinal
canal, and so important in the economy of the digestive
process, that it performs its functions with <c closed doors,"
so to speak, being valved at both ends, and endowed with
a powerful musculature, which is innervated by both the
systemic and sympathetic nervatures, hence it may be
regarded as the most actively functional of all the divisions
of the intestinal canal. Its manner and method of work-
ing, have been more exhaustively studied, than have been
those of any other intestinal division, but it cannot be said,
with any degree of truth that the last word has yet been
spoken, or written, on the subject ; on the contrary,
ON EMBRYONIC DIFFERENTIATION 269
judging from the past, it seems likely to afford a perennial
theme for discussion, by physiologist and clinician alike,
until medical science is with sufficient reason, or, at any
rate, entitled, to be called exact. The musculature of the
stomach is adapted to the performance of, circular, forward
and backward, movements, of its contents, in accordance
with the necessities, arising during the functional activity
of the organ, or thrust on it, from failure of other parts of
the intestinal tube to meet their obligations, in the joint
work of intestinal circulation, by normal peristalsis. Anti-
peristalsis is a functional endowment of the gastric muscu-
lature, whereby the vis medkatrix nature, is enabled to
effect, the reversal of a possible pathogenic functional
current, and to relieve the physiological factors of the
necessity of dealing with dangerous elements, alimentary,
and others. The gastric musculature is here mainly under
the control of sympathetic innervation, and hence is
inexorable in its demands on its systemic partner.
The smaller bowel (see Fig. 1 1 3), consisting of duodenum,
jejunum and ileum, is small in lumen, but much longer
than any division of the alimentary canal, and has added
to its contents a larger quantity of intra- and extra-mural
material, than any other division receives, the liver, and
pancreas, besides the local mural glandulature, contributing
their entire secretions. The bile and pancreatic juice
being added, immediately after the duodenum leaves the
pyloric orifice of the stomach, and the glandular secretion
of the entire extent of the canal of the smaller bowel,
added, as the chyme is circulated onwards, chemical and
physical changes are constantly occurring, during the con-
tinuance of that circulation, by which it is rendered absorb-
able by its lining mucosa (see Fig. 113). The stomach
having already removed, by osmosis, the more liquid
portion of its contents, and prepared the substance of the
chyme for digestive treatment, by the smaller bowel, the
villi of whose lining membrane are able to absorb, and
pass into the capillary terminations of the lacteal vessels,
and, necessarily, to some extent, into the blood capillary
vessels distributed within it, the materials, which have
yielded to the digestive influences here brought to bear
on them, with the result, that, only an unyielding
270 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
undigested residuum is passed through the ileo-caecal
valve, to be subjected to a still farther digestive process>
ere it is ejected, as altogether indigestible.
Posterior to the ileo-caecal valve (Fig. 115), the
intestinal canal is continued as the larger bowel, con-
sisting of the caecum, with the vermiform process,
colon, and rectum, to the anus, where the division, and
differentiation, of the neurenteric canal, were originally
effected, and where the residual result, of the various
digestive processes, to which the elements of the food
originally ingested have been subjected, are ultimately
ejected. The digestive processes, to which the contents
of the larger bowel are subjected, seem to be, in principle,
and method, a continuation, and completion, of the long
Fig. 114. — Portion of small intestine laid open to show the
valvule conniventes. (Brinton.)
series constituting the physiologically entire process of
digestion, and, as is characteristic of the preceding stages,
they are conducted with " closed doors," the ileo-caecal
valve, the sigmoid flexure, to some extent, and the anus,
constituting barriers, which, in the physiologically healthy
condition, are effective barriers.
From this point of view, we think we are warranted in
regarding the caecum as a posterior stomach, in which the
residual chylous contents of the smaller bowel are sub-
jected, on their arrival, to a further muscular agitationr
during their admixture with the secretion of the vermiform
process, a lymphoid material, which is credited with
almost negligible qualities, but, nevertheless, a secretion,,
of as definite, and physiologically decided a character, as
those of the liver, and pancreas, and the only secretion,
moreover, which empties itself into the commencement of
ON EMBRYONIC DIFFERENTIATION 271
the larger bowel, and which must, necessarily, be connected
with the digestive phenomena occurring therein.
The operation of the law of gravitation, furthermore,
keeps the caecal contents in a position, favourable for
admixture with the secretion of the appendix (see Fig. 1 1 3),
ere they mount the lumen of the ascending colon, and
pursue their course along the remainder of that bowel.
It is here, in particular, where the most characteristic
stercoraceous changes are effected in the alvine contents,.
Fig. 115. — View of the ileo-colic valve from the large intestine.
\ (After Santorini.)
The figure shows the lowest part of the ileum, i, joining the caecum, c, and the
ascending colon, o, which have been opened anteriorly, so as to display the ileo-
colic valve ; a, the lower, and e, the upper segment of the valve.
but whether these changes are due to ordinary local
chemico-physical action alone, or whether this is aided, by
anaerobic bacterial activity, it would be premature to
speak, still it would seem, not too far-fetched to say, that
here the alimentary residuum may perhaps, in order to
effect its complete physical disintegration and chemical
resolution, in addition to the action of the local bowel
digestive agencies,' have added a living bacterial agency
or " pseudo-phagocytic " organisation, on kindred lines to
those of the leucocytes, or white blood corpuscles, in the
economy of nutrition. The presence here, of organisms
of this character, in ordinary physiological conditions of
272 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
health, is at least suggestive of their utilisation in the
economy of digestion, as a supplement to the many
chemical and physical instrumentalities brought to bear
on the preparation of the nutritive pabulum, for intestinal
absorption and tissue assimilation.
The larger bowel terminates in what is equivalent to a
cloaca, in which, the last chemico-physico-bacterial in-
fluences of digestion are brought to bear on the alimentary
residuum, in the descending colon, and it seems, to us,
more especially anterior to, and in, the sigmoid flexure
(Fig. 1 15), which acts as an inner barrier, or valve, to the
immediate farther progress of that residuum. We are
further of opinion, that this inner anatomical barrier, or
valve, is utilised as a pre-anal protective agency against the
continuous forward peristaltic movement of the bowel
contents, and as a means of prohibiting and preventing
peristalsis of the anal portion of the rectum ; peristalsis
of which, it seems to us, is produced, or allowed by
relaxation of this inner sphincter, and the invasion of the
pre-anal gut (Figs. 113, 115), by the faecal contents of the
descending colon and sigmoid flexure. The sequence of
the phenomena of defecation, moreover, seems to be
initiated, in the ordinary physiological conditions of the
structures, and their functions, by a continuation of pre-
sigmoid peristalsis, along the wall of the pre-anal part of
the rectum, which, as the alvine material is passed onward
into the lumen of this part of the rectum, reflexly
stimulates the systemic nervature of the anal orifice of the
bowel, with the result that the anal sphincter is relaxed,
and aided, when required, by the voluntary musculature
of the abdominal walls, the expulsion of that portion of
the excreta, lying between the inner and outer sphincters,
is thereby effected.
It may be that this inner sphincteroid provision, which
we have called a fascimeter, is due, largely, to mechanical
obstructive circumstances, from flexure alone, but we are
disposed to regard it as being aided by anatomico-
physiological adjustments and structural adaptation, and
that the effect of its operation is the saving of continual
discomfort and distress, and the rendering of everyday life
experience, not only bearable, but securely safeguarded.
ON EMBRYONIC DIFFERENTIATION 273
In this connection, it may be held as a rule that the
quantity of each alvine evacuation is determined by the
quantity containable, consistently with the absence of
local discomfort, within the post-sigmoid portion of the
Fig. 116. — Vertical section of the pelvis and its viscera in the
male. ^ (Allen Thomson, after Houston.)
This figure is introduced to illustrate the form, position, and relations of the rectum ;
it also shows the bladder and urethra with the pelvic inflection of the peritoneum
over these viscera : r, r, r, the upper and middle parts of the rectum, and at the
middle letter the fold separating the two ; r, a, the lower or anal portion ; v, the
upper part of the urinary bladder ; v' , the base, at the place where it rests more
immediately on the rectum ; fi, the prostate gland and prostatic portion of the
urethra ; b, the bulb ; c, c, the corpus cavernosum penis and suspensory ligament ;
sc, the scrotum ; s, symphysis pubis.
rectum, and that the consistency of its substance, or
material, and the responsiveness of the combined machinery
of evacuation, determine the manner, and method, of its
ultimate elimination, or excretionary disposal.
In connection with the assignment of sphincteroid
powers, to the anatomical mechanism of the sigmoid
s
274 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
flexure, we would draw attention to the fact that a quantity
of gas is always present locally, and generally, throughout
the intestinal tract, and is dependent for its presence on
several causes, amongst others, to the following, viz.
air swallowed with the ingesta, gas generated by chemico-
physiological, or digestive, action and reaction, and gas
emitted from the bowel mucosa, but, from whatever, or
all, of these causes, there is always, in a physiologically
healthy state of the parts, a quantity, sufficient more or
less to balloon the bowel, and secure free passage to its
contents. Needless to say, this gas is, more or less,
locally confined, within the compartments into which the
intestinal tube is divided, and moved, from compartment
to compartment, by the ordinary peristaltic action of the
bowel wall, having to leave its lumen, when incompatible
with bodily comfort, by relaxation of the cardiac valve of
the stomach, and anal sphincter, situated, respectively, at
its two extremities — That the " ballooning " of the bowel
is a function of nothing less than vital importance, must
be apparent to every one who has had an opportunity of
witnessing the phenomena in others, or has attentively
analysed his own sensations, in relation thereto. We need
only observe, therefore, that peristalsis, and anti-peristalsis,
are in constant operation to effect the phenomenon, and
that a feeling of absolute comfort in the neutral region is
possible only when the lumen of the intestinal tube is
equally relaxed, or at rest, or contracting on its contents,
without their undergoing more than the normal amount of
obstruction to their forward, or backward, passage. In
all the activities of the bowel wall, it is a primary necessity
that a normal quantity of ballooning materials should be
present within its lumen, in which condition the bowel
musculature is supplied with a continuous " fulcrum," so
to speak, on which it can support itself in its continuous,
staltic, or vermicular, disposal of its contents, solid,
liquid, and gaseous.
During active stalsis, both peri- and anti-, it may be
that considerable discomfort ensues, and when acutely
localised, a condition of violent spasm, or cramp, of the
bowel masculature is the result, also, that in minor
degrees of that discomfort, in the almost normal " state
ON EMBRYONIC DIFFERENTIATION 275
of things," for instance, when a mere local increase of
" flatus " obtains, the positions usually assumed, or
affected, agree with the positions of the principal sphinc-
ters of the intestinal canal, viz. the cardiac, and pyloric,
the ileo-caecal, the sigmoid flexure, and anal sphincter.
When morbid obstructive bowel phenomena have to be
practically dealt with, it becomes absolutely necessary to
bear these elementary facts in memory.
The adaptation, therefore, of the anterior limb of the
V-shaped neurenteric canal, to the requirements of an
apparatus, for the preparation of alimentary materials for
nutritional purposes, may be regarded as transcendently
complete, and absolutely adapted, to meet its every
requirement, from whatever aspect its details, individual,
and communal, can be viewed. It need scarcely be added
that the posterior limb of the neurenteric V is the only
other evolutional product, in its finished state, in any way
comparable, in its details, and adaptation, to functional
purposes, which can be met with in the whole course, and
history, of evolution, organic, or inorganic. We cannot,
therefore, but regard these two neurenteric evolutionary
products as the "crown, and head" of the anatomical
sequence, reaching from the amoeba to the last vertebrate,
and from the first to the last of that great biological
ascent, or descent, known to natural science and revela-
tion alike, as " life on earth." In this connection, it
only remains to add that these two divisions of the
neurenteric canal, in their fully evolved condition, of
structural, and functional, fitness, are fitly joined together,
and operated, by the great dynamic organism, the heart,
and blood vasculature, with the result, that the greatest
biological wonder in our world, thus, becomes accom-
plished, and visible, in the form of man, with all his
attributes, and aspirations, his physical, and mental,
faculties, his powers to realise the past, and the present,
and his ability, to some extent, to grasp, and anticipate,
the future, as well as to evolve, and apply, the principles
of justice, ethics, and morals, in relationship to himself, as
well as to his fellow-men.
Digestion, thus, is a very long, and complicated, process,
combining, as it does, the use of mechanical, chemical,
276 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and physiological, agencies, and the use of absorptive
media, adapted to the transference of the digested material,
from the intestinal canal, to the various vasculatures
leading to the central, or blood, circulation : in which, it
but illustrates the truth we have contended for, namely :
circulatio circulationum omnia circulation and that oneness of
design, or purpose, and continuity of operation of the
various means devised for the accomplishment of it, mark
its every stage, — Thus, the mechanical trituration of the
articles of food is accomplished, simultaneously, with their
softening and partial liquefaction, as well as their admix-
ture with the chemically-reducing agencies of saliva, and
the linguo-tonsillo-pharyngeal cerebro-spinal, residual and,
perhaps, fermentative excretion, which they gather from
every papillary, height, and hollow (Fig. 112), as they
are buffeted from side to side in measured mastica-
tion, or eddy round the tonsillar promontories, encircle
the pendulous body of the uvula, as they drag past its
obstructing presence, or as they impinge on the cavernous
walls of the pharynx, ere they are plunged into the
narrow lumen of the oesophagus, lined by a mucosa, from
the surface of which is detached, by their passage, a viscid
fluid, which, in turn, must necessarily add to the digestive
agencies already at work, in the accomplishment of the
great common end. Reaching the stomach (see Fig. 1 13),
another, and the greatest, chemical influence, is brought
to bear, on their reduction to a state of fluidity, and
chemical composition, suitable for trans-sudation through
the gastric wall, preparatory to the production, and trans-
mission, of the residual, or resultant, chyme, into the
small intestine, where admixture with physiologically
elaborated juices, and ferments, breaks them up into a
state of physical consistence, or chyle, suitable for absorp-
tion by its lining mucosa (Fig. 114), and circulation
through its related lacteals. During the operation of
these agencies, a remainder is left, which has resisted their
combined, mechanical, chemical, and physiological, influ-
ences, and which, in turn, is ushered into the larger
intestine, to be subjected to further reduction, and
disintegration, in order to fit it for passage through the
meshes of the surrounding mucosa, and this is accom-
OF EMBRYONIC DIFFERENTIATION 277
plished, amongst other proper large bowel agencies, by
admixture with the appendiceal secretion, loaded with the
bacillus coli communis, which latter, in our opinion,
exercises an actually, living, and specific, influence, on the
passing residuum, breaking it up into impalpable pabulum,
so to speak, in which state, it finds the requisite passage,
through the large bowel wall into the proper receiving
vasculature, leaving the irreducible remainder, to find its
way to the sigmoid flexure of the descending colon, for
faecimetric transmission into the rectum, to be finally
" searched " for still remaining nutritive elements, and
made into parcels for convenient disposal, as altogether
unutilisable. These stages, and factors, may be said, to
constitute a short syllabus of the long process of diges-
tion, or a bird's-eye view of the first, or alimentary
circulation.
EXTRACT XXV. b.
ON THE SIGMOID FLEXURE OF THE COLON.
The sigmoid flexure (see Figs. 1 1 3, 1 1 5), as already implied,
represents an anatomical device of the highest functional
value, and an evolutionary product due largely to the as-
sumption of the erect position by the members of the human
race and the consequent necessity for the provision of an
automatic or self-acting and regulating alvine, circulatory,
and evacuant machinery, whereby the "calls of nature " can
be conveniently controlled and organised to meet the neces-
sities, amenities, and complex requirements of man's higher
individual and social destiny.
Thus viewed, the sigmoid flexure represents, in a highly
conspicuous degree, the anatomical evolution of structural
adaptations to changing functional requirements, as these
alter and increase, to meet altering generic needs — thus the
horizontally poised and quadrupedally progressing animal
is not " on all fours " with its related erect and bipedally
progressing human neighbour, and hence does not display
that more elaborate and, so to speak, more finished disposi-
tion of its enteric canal, that is to be observed in the latter.
This distinction, no doubt, is due to the combined influence
of the altered nature and manner of their respective
alimentations and the position of their respective alimentary
organs, in relation to gravity and the position of the orifices
of inlet and outlet of the alimentary and residual materials
current in their nutrition ; thus, the nearest mammalian
relations of man usually possess excretory orifices at points,
generally speaking, superior to or on a level with, although
sometimes, from functional necessity, etc., below, the
SIGMOID FLEXURE OF THE COLON 279
orifices of inlet, all which is in consonance with the
anatomico-physical necessities of their horizontal position
and the simpler physiological conditions involved in their
case. Man, on the contrary, in consequence, it seems to
us, or on account of, his vastly altered position in regard
to inlet and outlet levels produced by the assumption of
the erect position in his " daily walk," and the involved
disturbance in level of these orifices, has thereby begotten
a necessity for an altered disposition of his alimentary
canal, and so the introduction of specific differences in the
manner of providing for and effecting the function of
excretion has marked his attainment. Here, then, we
contend that we are warranted in claiming the duplication
or folding of the lower bowel, known as the sigmoid
flexure, as a great mechanico-physiological adaptation of
the intestinal tube to meet altered conditions as to
anatomical position of the human body and the changed
operation of the law of gravitation in relation thereto.
Thus, the fascial pelvic structures constituting the floor,
instead of merely guarding the posterior aspect and
extremity of the body, become a real pelvic floor, on which
is supported the superincumbent abdominal viscera and the
dependent area through which the great excretory organs
effect an outlet, it therefore follows that a great evolution-
ary work has been accomplished in the adaptation of means
to ends herein necessitated. In this evolutionary sequence
of events the adaptation of the intestinal canal to withstand
the influence of gravitation by automatically acting mechani-
cal means, while leaving the intestinal tube, nominally
patent, to convey, as formerly, its contents in obedience to
physiological law and necessity, stands out in our estima-
tion as one of the most manifest examples in the whole
range of later anatomical design. Thus we have seen the
alimentary canal converted from a horizontally, albeit
zig-zagly, disposed canal, to a perpendicularly arranged
tube, without a fundamentally altered plan — that canal, as
altered, resting at its lower extremity on the pelvic floor,
duplicated or folded, so as to provide an automatic means
of preventing overflow, or outflow, while allowing the func-
tion of peristalsis to be effected as before, with the super-
added advantage of safeguarded, but uninterrupted, alvine
280 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
expulsion, by the principle, as before stated, of a " faeci-
meter," or alvine regulator.
The alimentary or intestinal canal in both instances is
held in position by a series of anatomical structures
variously disposed and adapted to maintain its horizontality
or perpendicularity as the case may be, while providing for
its divisional and general patency, and securing, in stages,
the performance of its functional work, by the provision, in
its lumen, of a series of "shut" or valved " sacs," in
which the particular acts of digestion are carried out seriatim
and the process of nutrition ministered to.
These supporting structures and divisional dispositions
of the canal are known to anatomists by various names,
and when seen in whole, and regarded from the point of
view of design, and as effective adaptation of means to
ends, inspire the observant student as he, however slightly,
realises their import, with a feeling akin to that of the
astronomer when he succeeds in unravelling the details of
a solar system, or the terrestrial explorer when he discovers
a " dark continent."
Beyond this faecimeter, or alvine regulator, is the last, or
concluding, compartment of the intestinal canal, known as
the rectum (see Figs. 1 13, 1 15) from its straight disposition,
a pouch, or alvine chamber, in which, as in a cloaca, the
residual alimentary materials quickly or slowly accumulate
for periodical discharge under, more or less, the voluntary
control of the individual, through or by the aid of the
systematically innervated anal sphincter, and associated
abdominal expulsatory musculature.
Conducing to the functional facility of intestinal evacua-
tion is the moistening, or lubrication, of the intra- and
extra-anal, and proper rectal structures, effected by the
posterior outfall agency of the cerebro-spinal fluid, where
it empties itself from the coccygeal gland apparatus (see
Fig. 113), in the manner elsewhere described, and where
it seems to us to maintain the structural and functional
continuity of the once undivided embryonic neurenteric
canal, and to demonstrate the subsequent oneness of the
great circulatory economy existent amid the permanent
and final structural dispositions and visceral differentiations
of the adult body, as they have directly descended from,.
SIGMOID FLEXURE OF THE COLON 281
and been determined by, embryonic development and
evolution.
In the surgical and other means, therefore, had recourse
to in the treatment of diseases of this region, these facts,
we would call them, should not be overlooked, but allowed
to have that consideration which their importance demands,
and their immediate applicability entitles them to. More-
over, the appreciation of these facts will enable militant
medicine to meet the requirements of many cases on more
thoroughly scientific principles than have hitherto charac-
terised its procedure here, and so the services of surgery
may be obviated and its objects gained by less heroic
and more natural means, as well as in a more — from the
patient's standpoint — grateful manner.
In concluding our review of the knowledge, general and
special, existent at the present time, or any time within the
past half century, we would conclude, so far as our appre-
ciation of such a wide subject will enable us to do, that the
subject of alimentation has not yet advanced in its scientific
appreciation to more than its elementary stage, the elements
composing that stage having, to a great extent, still to be
gathered from physiological, pathological, and clinical
sources, accessible only with difficulty to the general
enquirer ; hence, we regard it as incumbent on those in-
terested in such a vital subject to collect and focus all their
information bearing directly and indirectly on its elucida-
tion, in order to be enabled to deduce its fundamental
and specific principles, with a view to ensure the scientific
application of regulative and ameliorative means wherever,
and whenever, the necessity for their use may arise.
We know enough, however, to warrant us in claiming
for the machinery of alimentation a completeness of adapta-
tion to its purpose as absolutely perfect as is to be found
throughout nature, a oneness of aim and object as com-
plete as structure and function can effect, and hence a
continuity of physiological working which it is essential at
all times to maintain, and, when faulty, to rectify, on lines
consistent with the necessity of the individual instance.
In addition to what has been said of the special mechanical
adaptation of the sigmoid flexure of the large intestine to
fulfil the functions of an internal sphincter and faecimeter —
282 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
we might assign to, or claim, for every flexure of the bowel
a kindred function, or kindred functions, and advance the
general opinion that the valvular structures, or mechanisms,
marking the beginning and end of its various intestinal
divisions, safeguarding the specific functional work of the
stomach, small and large intestines, are aided every instant
of their working time by a pe?istaltic flexuring of the bowel
tube, or intestinal canal whereby an effectual functional
treatment of the alimentary materials is obtained with the
greatest certainty, and the easiest passage, so far as dynamic
expenditure is concerned, along that canal — peristalsis
maintaining, on the part of these materials, a position in
which " gravitation " can be made available to the greatest
extent, and consequently with the least dynamic expendi-
ture or waste on the part of the bowel musculature. Thus,
the peristaltic wave of muscular contraction of the bowel
wall carries on the flood of alimentary materials with
a greater, or lesser, approach to inclined, or horizontal,
wriggling and moving in a serpentine manner, and so
utilising for functional purposes every fraction of the pro-
longed intestinal mucosa, each great intestinal division, or
viscus, delivering to another, readily prepared, the material
for its specific functional work — to the one great func-
tional end, that of the preparation of the food for nutritive
purposes, in which all the anatomical structural charac-
teristics of the alimentary canal, the physiological contriv-
ances, the dynamic expenditure, and the physico-chemical
interchanges of the alimentary materials combine with the
" ordinary statics and dynamics of nature " in preparing for
nutritive consumption and metabolism what experience and
reason dictate to each individual man and woman is the
food they require, or it may be they are compelled by
circumstances to take.
The alimentary canal, as a circulatory apparatus, is surely
one of those transcendently adapted for its purpose, and
showing evidences of design of the most elaborate and
succinct character throughout every stage and division of
its entire extent ; indeed, it is only equalled by that which
is apparent throughout the whole extent of the posterior
limb of the embryonic neurenteric V, and an unmistakable
example of the truth : circulatio circulationum omnia circulatio.
EXTRACT XXVI.
ON THE NEUROGLIA, AND HOW, AND WHEN, THE
ELEMENTS OF THE INGESTA BECOME ALIVE.
In dealing, here, with the more solid parts of the nervous
system, let us begin with the substance known as the
neuroglia, the most largely developed structure entering
into the composition of the brain, spinal cord, and
ganglia.
The neuroglia may be looked upon, as the scene of the
great problem of what may be described as a secondary
digestion^ and assimilation^ i.e. the cerebro-spinal, or central,
as well as the peripheral, nervous system, may be
regarded, so to speak, as a product of, or, at any rate, as
having been developed within, and from, that structure —
in other words, the blood arterio-capillary circulation
terminates, so far as its nutritive function is concerned at
least, within that structure, and leaves the brain portion of
it, by the vessels known as the sinuses (Fig. 117), i.e. it
conveys hither the materials, from which the nerve cell
structures, or neurons, are developed (Figs. 1 17, 118), and
by which they are nutritionally, as well as mechanically,
sustained, and, therefore, the neuroglia, thus, becomes the
storehouse, to which the raw materials are conveyed, and
from which the nerve structures select what they require
for their, development, maintenance, and repair. Hence
it may be regarded as the great terminus, to which the
circulation proper, or a section of it, is constantly engaged
conveying nutritive material, whence it can be taken up,
and distributed, to meet the requirements of the great
systemic nervous system — and this latter, the systemic
284
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
" nervous system " itself, may be regarded, as necessi-
tating, and forming another and distinct circulation, or
series of circulations, a large part of which, the cerebro-
spinal, has been already described. Thus, the neuroglia,
which is partly granular, and partly amorphous, inter-
Fig. 117.— The cranium opened to show the falx of the cerebrum
and tentorium of the cerebellum, and the places of exit
of the cranial nerves. ^.
1, falx; 2, superior longitudinal sinus; 3, concave border of the falx; 4, inferior
longitudinal sinus ; 5, base of the falx ; 6, straight sinus ; 7, anterior part of the
falx; 8, right side of the tentorium cerebelli, seen from below; 9, lateral sinus;
10, superior petrosal sinus; n, inferior petrosal sinus; 12, posterior occipital
sinus; 13, falx cerebelli; 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth
cranial nerves; 19, seventh and eighth nerves; 20, ninth, tenth, and eleventh
nerves ; 21, twelfth nerve ; 22, 23, first and second cervical nerves ; 24, upper
end of the ligamentum denticulatum.
penetrated, and supported, by a fibro-cellular meshwork
of very fine texture (Fig. 119) is at once, the physical
foundation, or basis, on which the component neurons of
the systemic nervous (see Fig. 1 1 7) system rest, from which
they grow, as plants do from the soil, from which they
extract their nutriment, and to the support, and integrity,
of which, all the organs, and structures, of the body,
ON THE NEUROGLIA
285
labour, and are kept in being. The systemic, or central,
nervous system, may thus be regarded as the innermost
texture of our being, and the " sanctum sanctorum " of
the " mind, and spirit," or the scene of the transcendental
Fig. 118. — Two nerve-cells from the cortical grey matter of the
cerebellum. Magnified 260 diameters. (Kolliker.)
union, of mind, and body, where the great mysteries of
" being," the " mystery of mysteries," lie, wrapt up, and
enshrouded.
The neuroglia, as thus described, may be claimed as the
great emporium, of brain, cord, and nerve, pabulum, or
plasma, deposited from the blood
circulation, as it permeates the
feltage of the glial flbro-cellular
reticulum, or matrix, where, also,
a proportion of the liquor san-
guinis escapes into the peri-vascular
spaces, to become continuous, in
circulation, with the peri-saccular
spaces, extra- and intra-cerebro-
spinal spaces, and peri-neural
channels, as the fluid, known as
cerebro-spinal. It, the neuroglia, forms, thus, the great
bulk of the substance of the brain, cord, and ganglia,
and before it has been utilised by the various neurons
composing these great structures, it may be called an
absolutely non-nervine substance — hence the impunity
with which the neuroglial matrix can be disturbed, or
destroyed, by foreign bodies, or traumatic agencies,
Fig. 119.— Part of the reti-
culum FROM THE SPINAL
cord. (Kolliker.) Mag-
nified 350 diameters.
286 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
without fatal consequences, in contradistinction, to the
fatal effects following destruction of neuronal structures.
Nevertheless, it is even then, we may take it, a sub-
stance highly energised, or potentially charged, and
capable, with neuronal metabolism, of meeting the
physiological, and psychological, requirements, of every
neuronal unit of the great central nervous system,
material, and dynamic. It may, therefore, be described
as the highest, and most finished, example, so to
speak, of nutritive pabulum, or plasma, to be found
within the organism, and, from its enormous total
quantity, it may be looked upon as never failing in
its immediate availability, and utility, in all metabolic
emergencies, arising within the systemic nervous system,
and to some extent, no doubt, within the attached, and
continuous, sympathetic nervous system, at least within
the debatable area supplied by the joint, or contiguous,
metabolic machinery, and plasma, of the two systems.
Its quantity, and quality, when viewed from the
standpoint of nutritional necessity, must also be regarded,
as absolutely meeting the various requirements of one
great nervous system, developed within, and by, another
great nervous system, which latter, being sustained by
constant supplies of raw, but adaptable, materials, drawn
from the outer world, in turn converts them into suitable
pabulum for the former, to be utilised by it, where, and
whenever, required, by its infinite multitude of neuronal
units, individual, and grouped.
Neuroglia, thus regarded, must be looked upon, as the
most essential of all the secretions — for we must rank it
as such — of the body, for from, and on, it, grow the entire
neuronal elements of the systemic nervous system, with
their histological continuations of, muscular, osseous, and
dermal, developments, in other words, of all the non-
sympathetically innervated structures, motile, and aesthetic^
or of the structures evolved from the original ectoderm.
Besides being the most essential of all secretions, it
lends itself to a continuation of the secretory process, in
that it becomes utilised by the various neurons, through
absorption by their dendritic processes, metabolism of
their cell mechanism, and histological growth along their
ON THE NEUROGLIA 287
axons, with ultimate terminal incorporation with the
musculoskeletal, and dermal, tissues, and final, disintegra-
tion, and elimination.
If we accept these views, can we wonder at the mental
strength so often maintained, when bodily weakness has
taken possession of the organism ? We unreservedly say,
we cannot, inasmuch, as when the neuro-musculo-dynamic
machinery has been almost entirely switched off from the
sensory, and motor, centres, we are logically and physio-
logically, compelled to believe that the mind can, for long
periods subsist, more or less completely, on the large
passive reserve, stored up within the great materio-
dynamic repository of still unused neuroglial plasma, and
energy, and that intellectual cerebration can, so, be con-
tinued, until the stage of absolute dynamic exhaustion has
been reached — when, as in long-continued fever, entire
unconsciousness may set in, and reign, until the great
sympathetic nervous system determines, whether it is
capable of still maintaining life, and of renewing the
regime of systemic innervation, and conscious cerebration.
As the meso- and hypo-dermal tissues extract, and
metabolise, their nutritive supplies, directly, or indirectly,
from the all-pervading blood streams, so do the ecto-
dermal tissues extract, and metabolise, theirs from the
neuroglial matrix, the one being as essential, as the other,
in rendering possible, the performance of their respective
functional roles, and systemic work. These two great
passive elements, the blood, and the glia, representing,
respectively, the storehouses, so to speak, from which the
two great nervatures of the body draw their materio-
dynamic supplies, and convert them into work, and
unutilisable residuum.
The pia mater^ on which the neuroglia is dependent,
for the peculiar nutritive material, on which the neurons
live, and grow, and for the supply of that peculiar lymph,
which encircles, and inter-penetrates, the sponge-like struc-
ture of the entire systemic nervous system, finds, prepared
for the scene of its anabolic work, a superlatively finely
meshed basic (see Fig. 119) texture, or feltage, of cellulo-
fibrous formation, amid the interstices of which it deposits
that peculiar nutritive material, or glia, and through whose
288 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
fine meshes it allows to percolate, and escape, the more
liquid elements resulting from the process, into the inter-
spaces, and channels, coursing through the neuroglial
matrix. Occurring in this cerebro-spinal, and ganglionic,
process of deposition, by the pia mater vasculature, of this
plasmic, almost amorphous, material, and the draining, or
running off, from it, of its more fluid constituents, it will
be apparent, that a certain proportion of that amorphous
material will, or must, find its way, where it is scarcely
fluid enough to pass along the intra-glial inter-spaces, and
channels, into the lymph byways, and highways, for elimi-
nation, by the proper neuro-lymph excretory organisms,
and agencies ; hence the clogging, and perhaps stoppage,
of the intra-glial lymph circulation, may become a patho-
genic influence, and lead to the production of nervine
ailments, of the most profoundly cryptic character, as well
as, of the most clearly defined, mal-circulatory, conditions,
in central, and peripheral, nervine regions.
In estimating the extent, and manner, of incidence, of
nervine ailments, in all their categories, it will be well to
bear in mind, that the neuroglial matrix of brain, cord, and
ganglia, is composed of, structurally speaking, four ele-
ments, viz. glia proper, fibro-cellular basic tissue, blood
vasculature, and neurons, besides the cerebro-spinal lymph,
and that these, in a physiologically exact proportion, may
vary within certain definite limits, and that, if these limits
are passed, the elements of friction, or morbid, inter-
elemental influence, begin to work, and that the result, or
end, of that friction, may be, and possibly must be, patho-
genic— it, therefore, behoves everyone, engaged in the
clinical department of neurological medicine, to take
advantage of that knowledge.
We have little doubt, that much of the pathological
interference with cerebral, spinal, and neural, function,
is due to faulty proportions of these aliments, and to mal-
circulation of the cerebro-spinal lymph, and that remedial
measures, to be successful in rectifying the faulty condition,
must be based largely on their thorough appreciation, and
the therapeutic, and other, indications, flowing from that
appreciation.
This knowledge, grafted on a thorough, and sound,
ON THE NEUROGLIA 289
familiarity, with the latest, and best, neurology, will,
we are convinced, bear excellent fruit, in the fields of
both general, and psychological, medicine, and will aid
in securing for these, as science, a position of greater,
exactitude, and respect.
The neuroglia is, thus, the basal plasmic nerve sub-
stance, or texture, and occupies a very large proportion
of the space designed for the accommodation of the
proper nervine structures known as the brain and
spinal cord, besides the intra-ganglionic textures of the
systemic, as well as, sympathetic, ganglia. From the
formidableness of its proportions, and the inwardness,
and centralness, of its position, we would suppose, that
its functional role must be large, complex, and subtle —
mechanically, it constitutes the padding, and stuffing, so
to speak, with which the inter-neuronal spaces are kept
" inflated," or occupied, and the contained, or interposed,
neurons, sustained in structural completeness, and indi-
viduality, without endangerment from collision, or friction,
with each other, or lethal contact with their general
environment ; physiologically, we hold, it constitutes
the great emporium, or storehouse, from which the
nutritive wants of the systemic nervous system are
supplied ; and physically, it is composed principally of
what may be described, as metamorphic or nutritive,
materials, ranging in pseudo-organised consistence, or
development, from the almost amorphous, to the some-
what corpuscular, in which condition, or state, it is
broken up, and absorbed, by the amceboid activity of
the dendritic processes of the various nerve cells, and
licked into the condition of nerve cell protoplasm —
while, supporting, and sustaining, all, there is, in turn,
a fibro-cellular framework (see Fig. 119) of the finest, and
most delicate, tissue known, within the meshes of which,
are deposited from the blood capillaries, the neuroglial
elements, to be arranged, kept vitalised, and stored,
for the future use of the systemic neuronal economy,
when, and wherever, required.
The almost amorphous, or minutely particular, con-
dition, of a large part of the neuroglial elements, thus
renders, for their retention, or storage, in a position
290 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
where they are immediately accessible, and available, for
neuronal pabulum, the provision of this unusually finely
meshed containing texture, or feltage, which is porous
enough to permit a free, and untrammelled, functional
activity, of the contained nervous elements, and the
uninterrupted circulation of the cerebro-spinal fluid.
Needless to say, all these provisions are, or have been,
marvellously secured, within the apparently almost homo-
geneous matrix of the neuroglia, and facilities allowed,
whereby its unutilised, and effete, residuum, can be
removed, and its peri-vascular, and peri-cellular spaces,
kept occupied by a yielding medium of cerebro-spinal
fluid, capable of meeting the exigencies of contraction
and expansion.
We, therefore, find, within the texture of this
quasi-homogeneous basal elementary nerve substance, a
complexity of physico-histological arrangement of its
constituent matter, and a system of the most elaborate
circulatory inter-spaces, and channels, provided, whereby
the nutrition of its contained neurons is secured, and a
vital hygienic regime maintained, amid which, the high,
and varied, functions of brain, and nervous system, can
be performed, without jar, or hindrance, with the maxi-
mum of ease, and the minimum of friction. In this
region of bodily calm, nevertheless, what mental, and
nerve, storms, may, and do, at times prevail ?
The vital process, or manner, of procedure, involved in
the transference of neuronal pabulum, from the capillary
blood circulatory media, to the nerve cell textures,
represents the first stage, of the last great nutritional
rearrangement, and disposal, of organised matter, in the
" round of the changes" constituting its life-work, and
history, within the body. The pia mater circulatory
textures, ooze, distil, or filter, into the inter-spaces of
the neuroglial feltage, the amorphous elements of the
neuronal pabulum, where they remain, in pristine, or
perhaps faintly organised, form, fit for dendritic imbibi-
tion, nerve cell disposal, and nerve protoplasmic formation,
along with the cerebro-spinal lymph, or fluid, closely
allied to the liquor sanguinis in chemical composition,
and no doubt derived from it, and continuing, like it,
ON THE NEUROGLIA 291
to exercise, we cannot help thinking, a preservative
influence, in virtue, we may presume, mainly of its
chloride of sodium, acting on the faintly vital constitu-
tion, and non-, or slightly-, organised, neuroglial
substance. In this process is perpetuated, the operation
of the principle of circulation, or the onward flow of
living matter, in its progress, from the less organised,
to the more organised, condition, and is displayed what,
without exaggeration, may be denominated, a second
digestion, and assimilation, the first consisting of alimen-
tary, and the second of neuroglial, and neuronal,
phenomena, and each affording the starting-point for
new organic arrangements of matter, and the formation
of new structural, and organic, elements — the earlier,
or alimentary, digestion, furnishing the nutritive pabulum
for the growth, and sustenance, of the sympathetic, or
non-systemic, nervous elements, of the bodily textures,
while the latter, or neuronal, digestion, supplies the more
elaborated, and highly potential, elements, for the growth,
and sustenance, of that truly wonderful compound of
materio-dynamic organisms constituting, what is known as,
the brain (Figs. 120, 121), and nervous system, wherein
dwells, and works, for good, or for evil, the presiding
mind, and immaterial essence, of man.
In this process of secondary, or neuronal, digestion,
the nerve cells, by their dendrons, take up, and assimilate,
what is required for their own individual support, as well
as what is required for the maintenance of their contained
nuclei, and nucleoli, and pass it out, or excrete it, as
neural protoplasm, along the lumina of the cavities, tubes,
or inter-spaces, within the containing walls, or neurokera-
tinous sheaths, " of the white substance of Schwann," and
the axis cylinders, of their axons, respectively. In our
opinion, we are entitled to regard this, as a process of
growth, or circulation, along the channels, or spaces,
enclosed by the sheaths, respectively, of the medullary,
and axis cylinder, substances, which ends in organised
exudation, at the terminal extremities, or peripheral arbori-
sations, of the various nerve fibres, sensory, and motor.
Whether the rate of progress of this growth, or circu-
lation, is equal, or approximately identical, in the two
-7 c
lo-
Fig. 120.
Fig. 121.
ON THE NEUROGLIA 293
protoplasmic products, of the cell, and nucleus, respec-
tively, it would be hazardous to guess, nevertheless, we
think there is evidence to demonstrate that it is not
alike, as is to be seen in a well-known illustration at
page 310 of Quain's Anatomy (tenth edition), where the
axis cylinder has projected its substance, to a considerable
distance beyond its surrounding, and accompanying, tubule
of white, or medullary, substance. This may, of course,
be due to the different, or variant, action, of the reagents
employed, on the differing structures of the medullary
and axis cylinder protoplasms, respectively, but it, at
any rate, proves, that these two substances, can move at
different^ and independent rates, under the influence of like
stimuli, or reagents. The sequence of the material
changes occurring in the neuro-metabolic digestive proce-
dure thus described, represents a process of developmental
ascent from the elementary, or non-organised, to the
organised, or complex, and is attributable to the operation
Fig. 120.— View of the cerebro-spinal axis. (After Bourgery.) i.
The right half of the cranium and trunk of the body has been removed by a vertical
section ; the membranes of the right side of the brain and spinal cord have been
cleared away, and the roots and first part of the fifth and ninth cranial nerves, and
of all the spinal nerves of the right side, have been dissected out and laid sepa-
rately on the wall of the skull and on the several vertebrae opposite to the place
of their natural exit from the cranio-spinal cavity.
F, T, O, cerebrum; C, cerebellum ; P, pons Varolii ; mo, medulla oblongata;
m s, in s, point to the upper and lower extremities of the spinal marrow ; c e, on
the last lumbar vertebral spine, marks the cauda equina ; v, the three principal
branches of the nervus trigeminus ; C i, the sub-occipital or first cervical nerve ;
Cvm, the eighth or lowest cervical nerve; D i, the first dorsal nerve; D xn,
the last dorsal ; L I, the first lumbar nerve ; L v, the last lumbar ; S i, the first
sacral nerve ; S v, the fifth ; Co i, the coccygeal nerve ; s, the left sacral plexus.1
1 The relation between the bodies and spines of the vertebrae and the places of
attachment of the nerve-roots to the cord is also illustrated by this figure. For
more detailed information on this point the reader may consult Gowers, The
Diagnosis of Diseases of the Spinal Cord, 1880.
Fig. 121.— Anterior and posterior views of the medulla oblon-
gata and spinal cord with sections. (Allen Thomson. ) \.
The cord has been divested of its membranes and of the roots of the nerves. A is an
anterior, B a posterior view. In these figures the filiform prolongation, repre-
sented separately in B', has been removed ; C shows a transverse section through
the middle of the medulla oblongata ; D, a section through the middle of the
cervical enlargement of the cord ; E, through the upper dorsal region ; F, through
the lower ; G, through the middle of the lumbar enlargement ; and H, near the
lower end of the conus medullaris.
1 to 6 refer to parts of the medulla oblongata ; the remaining numbers to parts
of the spinal cord.
1, pyramids ; 1', their decussation ; 2, olivary bodies ; 3, lateral columns ; 4,
posterior surface of the medulla oblongata ; 4', calamus scriptorius ; 5, funiculus
gracilis ; 6, posterior lateral columns passing to the side ; 7, 7, anterior median
fissure of the spinal cord ; 8, 8, antero-lateral impression corresponding to the
attachments of the anterior nerve roots ; 9, 9, posterior median fissure ; 10, 10,
postero-lateral groove; X, tapering extremity of the cord; X, X , in B', filum
terminale.
294
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
of sympathetico-systemic nerve force, or energy, on twice
digested matter, within jealously bounded lines, and
essential conditions, which eventuates in the evolution
of the highest type of structure, or organism, known to
science. All preceding processes of a like, but earlier,
and less finished, character, so to speak, observable along
the far-stretching ascent of organised being, and structure,
but illustrate the steps and stages
of the all-pervading, everywhere
operative, and moulding, " law of
evolution/' the beginning, and
end, of which, according to both
science, and revelation, are not yet
realised — abundant corroboration of
which cryptic expression is afforded,
by the study involved in grasping
some very inadequate meaning of the
great fundamental, or root, pro-
blems, of matter, force, or energy,
time, and space, and the apparent
reality, of that " day dream " of
the " thinker," that all these great
fragments of truth are but the
quarry rubble, out of which the
structure of the known, and know-
able, cosmos, is ultimately to be
constructed, and displayed, by us
" humans " — even here, and now,
we seem approaching a " point of
view" from which the two first
of these, viz. matter and energy,
seem mutually resolvable. It is possible to conceive,
that this fundamental nervine element, the neuroglia,
may be liable to mal-development, or deposition, but
such an aspect of the subject must be regarded, as
almost entirely within the region of the inferential,
and the speculative, and, so far, therefore, lacking the
possession of facts, histological, physiological, and patho-
logical, it is thus entitled to nothing more than a passing
notice ; we, however, think, that although the briefest
notice, or reference, will here be possible only, we are
Fig. 122.— B, Diagram to
SHOW THE PARTS OF A
MEDULLATED FIBRE.
i, i, outer or primitive sheath
enclosing the doubly contoured
white substance or medullary
sheath ; 2, a part where the
white substance is interrupted,
the outer sheath remaining ;
3, axis cylinder projecting
beyond the broken end of the
tube ; 4, part of the contents
of the tube escaped.
ON THE NEUROGLIA 295
warranted, and called upon, to take that notice, and
make that reference.
The neuroglial matrix, wherever existent, being the
medium of supply for the nutritive wants of the neuronal
commonwealth, in both its individual, and collective,
aspects, becomes, an anatomical structure of the most
supreme moment, in the great functional activities of
development, growth, and everyday nutrition, not only
of the nervous system proper, but of the whole non-
nervous tissues to which the systemic nervous system is
distributed, it, therefore, becomes apparent that any con-
genital, or acquired, mal-development of it, must lead
to a departure from the normal physiological condition,
of both the nervous, and non-nervous, structures, and,
hence, to a departure from the normal functional per-
formance of the involved part, or parts. Holding such
views, we infer, that some such circumstances are at
work, in the evolution of such a phenomenon, as a
congenital lusus naturae, mental, or even physical, and
the production of many post-natal freaks, as well as
the causation of the many mental, and moral, insanities
which are liable to attack the race.
Here we cannot help thinking strongly, that an imper-
fectly developed, or unstable, neuroglial matrix, must, of
necessity, constitute the point of origin of these various
phenomena, and that some error in the manner, or matter,
or both, of its blood supply, and derived blood plasma,
must constitute the first link in the chain, of the morbid
evolution in question.
What a vista of possibilities, for weal, or for woe, is
thus revealed, or brought within our range of vision, when
we recognise, that the data for the full development of this
speculation, reach back, it may be, for generations, into
the past, concentrate in the immediate parentage, paternal,
and maternal, and are ultimately wrought out, and
developed, in the present, and future, under the manifold
influences of a complicated environment, in the persons of
the affected individuals ! — heredity, and immediately oper-
ative moulding influences, being, conjointly, responsible for
the accomplishment of any given result, or results, which
may come under our observation, and critical notice.
296 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
The obviation of mal-development, and the securing of
a normally healthy neuroglial matrix, must be sought for
"all along the lines" of growth, nutrition, and active
functional life, of that anatomical structure, by the supply
of every condition required for the production of healthy
metabolism. Of course, these can only be fully, and
properly, operative, when a proper foundation has been
laid, in an absolutely sound, and healthy, parentage, but
given that, the results must follow, in every way, in
accordance with unexceptional developmental conditions.
The maintenance of this normally healthy condition
must be sought for, along the same lines, and is securable
to the end of life, on these, and these alone, any departure
from which, according to universal experience, is followed
by, correspondingly abnormal consequences.
The materials for the production of absolutely healthy
nerve plasma, having been laid down by the haemal
vasculature, amid the fibro-cellular feltage, constituting
the proper connective framework of the neuroglial matrix,
it may be asked — are these materials now alive ? The
question may be answered, in the Scotch fashion, by asking
others, to the following effect : — when and by what
means does the food, organic, and inorganic, ingested,
become alive ? True answers to these questions, we
acknowledge, in the present state of knowledge on the
subjects, it is impossible to give ; nevertheless, we feel,
all the more, constrained to contribute to their solution,
what we can, as flowing out of the unusual problems with
which we have been confronted, in our self-imposed
exploratory efforts, in fields lying outside of present
positive, scientific knowledge, and attainment.
We regard the question of, when matter is endowed with
life after it has entered the primary, or intestinal circula-
tion, of an organised creature, as being one to which a
very guarded reply must be made, inasmuch, as we are
aware it can only be founded on, a compound of fact, and
somewhat strained induction. The earliest stages in the
materio-dynamic experience of the nutritive material are
those of mechanical, and chemical, preparation, after which
comes physiological admixture, then absorption through
organic membrane, circulation into the blood stream, and
ON THE NEUROGLIA 297
aeration, after which, it is distributed, to the various tissues
to be nourished, in the form of a, more, or less, vitalised
corpuscular compound, to be still further vitalised, by
selective absorption, by, and incorporation with, the living
elements of the tissues. We therefore, content ourselves
with the advancement of the statement, that matter, in the
process of vital incorporation , can only be said to be absolutely
alive, when the process of vital incorporation with the living,
and working, elements of the body, is absolutely complete ; before
that, it may be described, as only partially alive, while after
that, it is less than absolutely alive — its pre-, and post-
integrative experiences, being the positive, and negative,
aspects, of the great process of nutrition. As applied to
the growth, and nutrition, of the systemic nervous system,
we recognise a somewhat unique, or exceptional, sequence
of formative events, in that, as the nutritive pabulum is
not extracted, or absorbed, directly, from the blood cir-
culation, and haemal nutritive media, by the nourished
textures, but laid down for neuronal absorption, and
incorporation, within the storage areas of the neuroglial
structure ; where it remains, until it is taken up by
the dendritic processes of the countless nerve cells, we
may, therefore, infer, that the amorphous, and the, more,
or less, developed, vitalised, and organised, matter, of the
neuroglia, is absorbed by the nerve cells, in a condition of
more, or less, active, life, or vital dynamic potentiality,
and that it is vitally preserved, conserved, or kept in readi-
ness, for nervine absorption, and incorporation.
In all this departure, from the ordinary mode of physio-
logical provision of nutritive material, in the processes of
growth, and repair, of neuro-cellular, tissue, we perceive a
means of nervine supply, which we may describe as
" balanced," whereby, constancy, and immediate avail-
ability, are secured, independently of the ordinary, and
somewhat fluctuating, haemal, nutritional resources. Thus,
we see provided, amid the meshes of the neuroglial con-
nective textures, contained within the brain, cord, and
ganglia, of the systemic, and the sympathetic, nervous
systems, a vast quantity, or a storage, of the raw material
of nerve pabulum or prospective nerve plasma, ready for
conversion into actual neuronal plasma, by a specific
298 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
process of neuronal ingestion, intra-cellular molecular dis-
position of the ingested materials, and imbibition by
the nuclei, and nucleoli, of their respective nutritional
elements, by their respective peripheral, and containing,
membranes, or outer coverings. These processes of
nervine, protoplasmic ingestion, and nutrition, result,
and culminate in constant plasmic streams issuing from
the neurons, and circulating along their axons, in the
form of the medullary, and axis-cylinder, substances, and
the provision of what nutritive material is necessary for the
insulated, and independent, needs of the nucleolar bodies.
Respecting this ever-ready supply of neuronal plasma,
we would observe, that, even the most fluctuating de-
mands, on the part of the systemic nervature, can be, at
once, and fully met, by a constant supply, without the
necessity of appeals to the supplementary offices of the
blood circulation, thus, securing a self-sustaining power,
both material, and dynamic, which places the maintenance
of life, on a sound, and secure, basis. Moreover, we are
disposed to think, that the natural, and rhythmic, occur-
rence, of sleep, and disuse of the higher systemic nerve
centres, explains, and has its explanation in, lapse of
" dynamic release," or periodic " dynamic conservancy,"
and " renewal," or " redistribution," of nerve energy.
EXTRACT XXVII. a.
ON THE CELL, IN ITS GENERAL BEARINGS ON THE
EVOLUTION OF LIVING FORMS.
That the cell, individually, and collectively, constitutes
the organic foundation of all living forms, may now be,
and, we may safely say, is admitted as axiomatic, and that
it affords not only, a theoretical, but a working, scaffolding,
on which we can, in safety, perform the duties of organic
science builders, with the maximum of success, and the
minimum of failure, has now been abundantly proved.
The cell individually, or the individual cell organism, has
performed, and continues to perform, the pioneer work of
organic life, claiming, from the inorganic matter of the
earth's crust, the materials, out of which it elaborates, by
vital energy, its distinctive protoplasm, clothing itself with
an outer, and differentiating, covering of that protoplasm,
which ensures the maintenance of its individuality, and the
power of perpetuating itself, by division, into still more
individual cells, which, by like divisional processes, con-
tinue the work, ad infinitum, — an organic fact, which is
now being utilised for purposes of the greatest hygeinic
importance, as witness, the adoption of bacterial agency,
in the analytical treatment, and hygienic disposal, of
sewage. The cell unit, as witness the amoeba, while
thus living, acts by, and for, itself, and is characterised
by individuality of action, and merely accidental com-
munity of purpose, and represents the primary form of
cell life, i.e. it begins, and ends, in self, so far as it
individually is concerned, disappearing absolutely when it
has performed the functional role destined for it, but
3oo
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
leaving behind it the legacy of its organic remains to its
descendants. It is entirely otherwise with the cell, whose
life is passed in collective (Figs. 123, 124, 125, 126)
existence, and where it constitutes, a definite unit, in a
community of cells, held together by complex, though
definite, vital arrangements, for the purpose of allowing,
or securing, the existence of a definite living organic form,
vegetable, or animal, whose individual life, in each
instance, is determined in length, and character, by its
position, as to fixity, and mobility, in the organic form,
or community, and by the nature of its individual
Fig. 123.— Multinucleated cells from the marrow. Highly-
magnified. (E. A. S.)
a, a large cell the nucleus of which appears to be partly divided into three by con-
strictions ; b, a cell the enlarged nucleus of which shows an appearance of being
constricted into a number of smaller nuclei ; c, a so-called giant-cell with many
nuclei ; d, a smaller cell with three nuclei ; e — t, other cells ot the marrow.
function in the economy of that organism, or cell
community. The individual cell, which pursues a soli-
tary existence, and whose " end and aim " is self, typifies,
also, the nature, and purpose, of the individual organism,
or community of cells, whose " end and aim " is also self,
and whose existence is maintained, in most cases, by its
preying on its unicellular relatives, and more defenceless
multicellular neighbours, and which constitutes the be-
ginning of that long chain of organic forms, which,
commencing in solitary cell life, ends in communal
existence, in the person of man himself, but whether it
will really end with man, our far-distant successors must
be left to determine.
ON THE CELL
301
Cell life is enjoyed, in common, by the unicellular
organism, if we may call it so, the multicellular creature,
vegetable, and animal, the limbed, and voluntarily moving,
being, and the erect, and thinking, man, himself, but how
unlike in character, and degree, is that life enjoyed !
Life, as thus enjoyed, is dependent on the existence of a
nervous system, which initiates, controls, and maintains,
all vital processes, evolving, and distributing, vital energy,
securing the persistence of living forms, and evolving
Fig. 124.
Fig. 124. — Three cells from early embryo of the cat. Highly
magnified. (E. A. S.)
b, protoplasm ; c, nucleus with nucleolus. The lowermost cell has two nuclei.
Fig. 125.— Ovum of the cat. Highly magnified. Semi-diagrammatic.
(E. A. S.)
zj>, zona pellucida ; vi, vitellus ; gv% germinal vesicle ; gs, germinal spot.
higher, and higher, types, which culminate in the appear-
ance of rational beings, and the introduction into the
guidance of the evolutionary process, of the high, intel-
lectual, and moral attributes which make for the elimination
of pain, and suffering, and result in the substitution of the
reign of " faith, hope, and charity." The nervous system,
in the unicellular organism, pervades the protoplasm of
that cell, determines the character of its life-work, and
is limited within its containing wall. The nervous
system, in the multicellular creature, however, undergoes
a great modification, and becomes, for the first time in
302
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
developmental sequence, a real nervous system, but entirely
of the sympathetic variety, in virtue of each cell of the
community, into which the primal cell, has divided, and
subdivided, being held together, and innervated, by a
process, or processes, uniting each unit, or cell, and
directing their individual work, for communal purposes.
In the limbed, and voluntarily moving, animal, a third
form of nervous system is evolved from the second, as
Fig. 126.— Stages in the division of the ovum or egg-cell of a
worm. (Strasburger.)
a, resting state ; b, nucleus transformed into a spindle-shaped system of fibres, which
are provided with thickenings at the equator of the spindle ; c, separation of
equatorial thickenings into two parts which gradually travel towards the poles of
the spindle and there become transformed into new (daughter) nuclei, whilst the
protoplasm at the same time also separates into two parts {d, e,f) ; g, repetition
of the division process, formation of spindles in daughter cells ; h, result of the
division of these. (The nuclear filaments are here probably only represented by
the thickenings at the equator of the spindle-shaped system, which is mainly
formed by fine straight filaments, which stain far less with haematoxylin than the
others, and on account probably of their less distinctness and want of colouration
are not seen.
the second is from the first, by which its many multi-
cellular organs, and parts, are made to subserve the,
common purposes, and co-ordinated functional work, of
a complex organism — this nervous system is called the
systemic nervous system, and is under voluntary control.
Arising out of, and evolved from, this systemic nervous
system, is a great central nerve organism, the brain (Fig.
127), which, in the human species, reaches such a
magnitude, and complexity of structure, and relationship
ON THE CELL
303
with all parts innervated by that system, that it dominates
the, working, and destiny, of every member of that
species, in a way absolutely unique, in the whole extent
of natural history.
Fig. 127. — Upper surface of the brain showing the convolutions.
^ (From R. Wagner.)
This view was taken from the brain of Professor C. F. Gauss, the mathematician,
who died in 1854,' aged 78. It is selected as an example of a well-formed brain
of the average size with fully developed convolutions.
a, a, a, superior or first frontal convolution ; a', a', a', second or middle frontal ; a",
third or inferior frontal ; A, A, ascending frontal convolution ; B, B, ascending
parietal convolution ; b, superior parietal lobule ; b", inferior parietal lobule ; c,
first or upper temporo-sphenoidal convolution ; d, first or upper occipital convolu-
tion ; d', second or middle ; d", third or lower ; /, /, the longitudinal fissure ; r,
the sulcus of Rolando ; f>, the external parieto-occipital fissure (which appears, in
consequence of the position of the brain, nearer to the posterior extremity than it
really is).
The cell, therefore, may be regarded as the " all in all,"
in the process of the evolution of living forms, as they
are to be observed throughout the entire field of natural
history, but its initiation, or start in life, involves a creative
act^ so momentous, and unique, as to place it entirely
beyond the power of the spontaneous action of any form
of known energy, on any form, or combination, of known
matter, or substance, to accomplish, hence we must regard
3o4 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
it, as altogether transcendental, and inexplicable by science,
but an absolute certainty nevertheless, and, so far as we
can discover, altogether attributable to a " Great First
Cause" — in other words, to The Power, beyond nature,
and evolution, of whose existence, all organisms, and
phenomena, are but the outward, and visible, symbols,
and the unmistakable earnest to us, that an Infinite
Intelligence, and Power, is working "behind the scenes,"
whose personality is quite visible to the " eye of faith,"
and as undeniably existent, as the symbols themselves, or
the thinking " ego." Moreover, who, can observe, and
realise, the beauty, and order, the precision of working,
and the momentous results flowing from, the creative act,
but must acknowledge that absolute perfection of design,
and infinite power, combined, must have dictated its
details, and superintended its accomplishment ? Nature,
evolution, chance, accident, et hoc genus omne, what are
they, when considered in this light ? Are they not, but
words and names, and words and names, only, doubtless
most expressive, but, here, unintelligent as inert matter,
and powerless as the non-existent ? In human intercourse,
do we not often hear the words repeated, in extenuation
of human helplessness, or human listlessness, " you must
take the will for the deed " ? In somewhat like manner,
and from kindred causes, do we not at times, in the most
unexpected quarters, also see a belief entertained, and
even expressed, in the "made" but not in the "maker" !
EXTRACT XXVII. b.
ON THE CELL, IN SOME OF ITS INTRINSIC, INDI-
VIDUAL, AND COMMUNAL, ASPECTS, AND IN THE
GENESIS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
To the cell is now assigned a functional role, embracing
the initiation, and evolution, of all vital phenomena,
whether nutritive, developmental, or perpetuative. From
the origin of the fecundated ovum, and parent cell body,
until the termination of the communal cell life of the
individual unally, or sympathetically, innervated organism
to which it gives rise, one unbroken cell developmental
process prevails, which only terminates by death, and
dissolution ; the life history of the organism is, therefore,
made up of a succession of cell growth, and division,
of re-cell growth, and re-division, in unbroken continuity
from the date of origin of the parent cell, to that of
the last generation of its successive cells, when failure
of vital energy, to maintain the required vital material
conditions of the organism's cell community, ensues.
The essential condition, or principle, underlying, and
determining that every cell is preceded by a parent cell,
except the systemic nerve cell, and that every cell which
does not perpetuate, or reproduce itself, cannot, in conse-
quence, exist in perpetuity, but hence must perish, or
terminate its line of descent, when it has lived its own
individual life.
The cell that manages, by gemmation, or kariokinesis,
to perpetuate itself, ensures the continuation of itself,
in the new cell genesis, with all its attributes, modified,
and fitted, by altering environment, to secure its
u
3o6 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
continuance indefinitely, or so long as the conditions or
such cell life are maintained. It, therefore, goes without
saying, that every such cell possesses life, with the
implied power of developing, and perpetuating, itself (see
Fig. 1 1 8), and that this possession secures, along favour-
ing lines, and under suitable environment, a continuous
succession of cell units, and communal cell organisms.
This must be held as applying to cells as individuals,
and communities, innervated by the sympathetic nervous
system, and not to cells belonging to the systemic
neuronal units, and communities, which latter, do not
repeat themselves, or become subservient, to the law of
lcariokinesis — a cellular condition, marking a new, and
absolutely unique, distinction, in the role of cell
life, within the higher animal life organisms, or those
whose innervation is dual. The cell life, or energy, is
sui generis, and cannot be replaced by, or continued as,
any other known form, or forms, of energy, and, hence,
must be regarded, as synonymous with that form of
energy known as, vital. Each cell is vitalised, and, so
to speak, innervated, minus a developed nervous system,
by this energy, along, it may be, molecular lines, and
in virtue of the existence, or provision, in the cell contents,
of circulatory facilities, or molecular pathways, for the
play of vital energy, or force ; each cell, moreover, by
the exercise of its inherent formative powers, or impulses,
acting through, or by, the agency, of its vital energy,
on its protoplasmic elements, perpetuates itself by, gem-
mation, mitosis, or kariokinesis, transmitting to its
succeeding, or resultant, cell, or cells, a sufficient moiety,
or portion, of itself, with all the vital, characteristics,
and qualities, to fit it, or them, to grow, and, in turn,
to repeat the process of perpetuative growth. The vital
processes, including the evolution, and circulation, of
vital energy, involved in the primitive form of cell
growth, and perpetuation, may be described as diffuse,
or only molecularly stranded, and determined, and is charac-
teristic of only the earliest stage of growth of the human
fecundated ovum, the succeeding stage, or where cell
fission, and increase of cell bodies, has begun, necessitating
the provision of the rudiments of nervous arrangement,
ON THE CELL 307
or means whereby the prolificating, and accumulating,
cell bodies, can be maintained in organic union, sufficiently
binding, or intimate, for the accomplishment of communal,
or organic, purposes. This advancing stage may be
described as, one of agglutination , by cellular contiguity,
and continuity, sufficiently intimate for purposes of con-
certed vital action, but devoid of a fully elaborated vital
energy conveying machinery, such as is provided in the
later stages of embryonic development.
The yet more advanced stage of embryonic develop-
ment, which consists in the arrangement, of the now
rapidly increasing primitive cells, into layers of dif-
ferent, character, and position, where the blastoderm
is divided into the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the
hypoderm, necessitates the laying down of the foundation
of the future nervine organisation, by super-position, inter-
position, inter-penetration, and co-ordination, of structure,
for the production, conservation, and circulation, of
energy, and non-plastic, and colloidal, nutritive materials,
which now becomes, more and more, required, by the
provision of a system of intercellular nervine circula-
tion, of vital energy and plasma ; this stage coincides with
the provision of a system of inter-cellular communicating
processes, or " linking up " cellular structural arrange-
ments, which becomes the basis of the future sympathetic
nervous system. All these phases, or stages, in the
evolution of the details of cellular development, and
perpetuation, with the involved problems of vital energy
production, and distribution, and plasma circulation,
belong to, and are concerned alike in, the origin, and
succession, both of vegetable, and animal, forms, — a line
of demarcation becoming noticeable, at the next stage,
or where the conditions of life become more complex,
when, besides the sympathetic nervous system, which is
still utilised to conduct the organic work, or pure vitalism,
of the organism, a systemic nervous system is added, or
evolved, in the more advanced, or highly organised, animal
forms, in order to fit them for taking part voluntarily,
and intelligently, in the many processes embraced in the
" battle of life," on the movable, and constantly altering,
stage, of animal contention, and " struggle for existence."
308 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
This line of demarcation, marks the most important
departure, from the hitherto existent cellulo-nervine, and
sympathetically fibro-nervine, manners, of vitalisation,
and innervation, thus far common both to animal, and
vegetable, organisms, and forms the foundation, on
which the evolution of the systemic nervous system,
in all its parts, and varieties, and in all its degrees of
simplicity, and complexity, from the insect to man
himself, is wrought out, and perfected ; it, moreover,
forms the stepping stone, to that high organic platform,
on which have been wrought out, and evolved, the higher
physiological, or intellectual, qualities, and attainments,
and the highest of all human characteristics, the moral
qualities, with the implantation of that craving, after the
gratification, if not entire satisfaction, of the uniquely
human conception of immortality.
Life, and all that it primarily means, on the earlier,
or rudimentary, side, of this somewhat arbitrary line of
demarcation in neuro-genesis, is first, confined within
intra-cellular limits, and second, is limited to inter-cellular
proportions, in addition to the intra-cellular, when cells
have sufficiently increased to require organisation ; in the
cellulo-genetic process. Segmentation of the parent cell
is regarded as due to nuclear selection, and disposition,
of the cell protoplasm, whereby its vitalised, and inner-
vated, molecular constituents, are segmented, and prepared
for independent existence, with every attribute of the
original cell reproduced, and capable of repeating the
process. The parent cell, in the process of sympathetic
neuro-genesis, may be regarded, as maintaining a, more
or less, prolonged, or temporary, structural connection,
with its segmented, and differentiated, progeny, in all
varieties of organised cell groups, or textures, in virtue
of a, more or less, sustained intercellular continuity, or
quasi-nervine connective tissue. The highest stage of
this type of neuro-genesis, is reached, in the complex
organisms of the highest types of plant life, in the non-
systemic nervous system possessed members of the animal
kingdom, and in the sympathetic nervous system controlled
textures of the systemic nervous system possessed animal
world.
ON THE CELL 309
Neurogenesis, and cell prolification, may, therefore, be
regarded as equal, in their rate of evolutionary progress,
and textural limits, and as representing but two aspects of
the same organic process ; in other words, neuro-
genesis, and cell prolification, are necessarily identical in
their incidence, as vital phenomena, in the evolution of
life forms generally, from inorganic matter, and in their
genetic, and developmental, operations, in the evolution
of individual organisms, vegetable, and animal.
The cell, as a living unit, possesses within itself its own
nervine, or vital, apparatus, or quasi-nervous system,
differentiated, and separate, from its environment ; the
cell group, or segmented cell, on the contrary, and in
addition, while possessed of such a system in each of its
divisions, maintains a, more or less, permanent nervine
connection, between its several cells, by virtue of a, more or
less, intimate structural connection, between parent, and
derived, cells, whereby is made possible the operations of
vital, and formative, energy, in the processes of organisa-
tion, growth, and the differentiation of living forms —
therefore, the cell lives, by virtue of its containing a
quasi-nervous system, this being inseparable from, and
mutually essential for its life, and vital activity, and the
cell group, in like manner, lives in virtue of the same
individual cell conditions, plus the existence of an inter-
cellular nervine connective system, secured by the survival
of structural segmented continuity, or contiguity, and
finally, by the elaboration of what is equivalent to, a
sympathetic nervous system. It is, thus, apparent, that
the parent cell, and the descended cell, cannot, and do
not, exist, or live, apart from a nervous system, we are,
consequently, compelled to recognise the operation of a
great /aw, which combines the working of all vital pro-
cesses, by the nervinely inspired, and possessed, organic
cell. The cell, individual and communal, and the nervous
system, are "one and the same" thing, i.e. they con-
stitute the material, and dynamic, aspects, of the one
great problem, viz. lifet
We must, therefore, be prepared to acknowledge
further, if these views be true, that all cells, by whatever
name known, are in rea/ity also, one, and the same, in
310 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
nature, and origin, and have only been differentiated by
the incidence of environment, and the functional neces-
sities, flowing from the exigencies of varied organic
evolution. All organic life, including the systemic
nervous system possessed life, it will, thus, be obvious, is
embraced within the operation of the law, and has been,
and must be, evolved on lines determined by its all-
pervading, formative, and moulding influence, in trans-
forming the inorganic " dust of the earth," into the
teeming millions of living organisms, known to present-
day science, besides the multitudes, which have haunted
the solitudes, and peopled the busy places, of the
ancient world.
The succeeding stages of neuro-genesis concern, the
appearance of a distinct, and great, advancement, in its
elaboration, and growing complexity, as the type of
organism mounts " the scale of being," and shows the
introduction, into the conduct of an absolutely auto-
matically working mechanism, of a principle of conscious,
and voluntary, control, of the most profound, and far-
reaching, character, and influence, as affecting the
individual organism, and the destiny of living things, and
as shaping the course of future evolution, in its bearing
on the advent of the human species, and the progress of
civilisation.
The neuro-genetic stages, thus referred to, consist, in a
word, of the various phases of unicellular, or molecular,
innervation ; communo-cellular nervine association ; sym-
pathetically innervated, and controlled, organisation ; and
combined systemic cellulo-sympathetic organism.
EXTRACT XXVIII. a.
ON THE GROWTH OF THE SYSTEMIC NERVE CELL,
AND WHAT FOLLOWS. WITH NEURO-PSYCHIC
GENESIS.
On studying the subject of Eczema, and allied affections,
we were led to infer, that the epidermic scales, and the
cells from which they were evolved, must, to some extent,
have been composed of the "cast off" material, or
apparel, of the afferent peripheral terminal nerve (Fig. 128)
structures, and that they, thus, represent an excretory
product ; in other words, the continuous " shedding " of
the skin must represent, to some, indeed the larger,
extent, the detachment, from the outer surface of the
organism, of effete material, derived from the growth
outwards to the skin of the neuroglial matter, through the
nerve cell, as the medullary, and nuclear, or axis cylinder,
protoplasm, of the various neurons, along the axonal
nerve fibres, until it reaches the various peripheral nerve
endings, throughout the entire cutaneous envelope. A
similar idea had struck us before, in connection with the
study of rheumatism, and the manner of termination of
the efferent or motor nerve fibrils in the substance of
the muscles.
We would add, besides, that the secretory role, which
we here have assigned to the nerve cell, in all its varieties,
necessitates the existence, or provision, of an excretory
mechanism, equal to the discharge of the secreted material,
and that, in looking, and searching, for such a mechanism,
we have followed the axonal processes of these cells, to
their synapses, their ganglionic cell interruptions, and
312
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
finally to their peripheral terminal extensions, in the
various textures, and organs, of the body, and there we
have discovered, to our own satisfaction, in the multi-
tudinous nerve terminal arrangements, the required
mechanism, and means, of securing the excretion, or
H
M{ m
Fig. 128. — Section of epidermis from the human hand. Highly
magnified. (Ranvier.)
H, horny layer, consisting of -J, superficial horny scales ; sw, swollen-out horny cells ;
s.l, stratum lucidum ; M, rete mucosum or Malpighian layer, consisting of
/), prickle-cells, several rows deep ; and c, elongated cells forming a single stratum
near the corium. The granular cells of Langerhans, which lie just below the
stratum lucidum, are not shown, n, part of a plexus of nerve-fibres in the
superficial layer of the cutis vera. From this plexus, fine varicose nerve-fibrils
may be traced passing up between the cells of the Malpighian layer.
elimination, of the used-up neuronal, or nerve cell, secre-
tion. This process is effected, in varying, but kindred
manner, alike on the surface of the skin, of the mucous,
and serous, linings, of the various tubes, or vessels, glands,
cavities, and viscera, and amid the muscular elements of
the body, wherever the systemic nervous system penetrates,
— in short, wherever a nerve fibril terminates, whether
systemic, or sympathetic, sensory, or motor.
THE SYSTEMIC NERVE CELL 313
The materials excreted, may be immediately, and finally,
thrown off, or may still be utilised for purposes of, pro-
tection, growth, lubrication, etc., ere they are allowed to
be finally disposed of, or shed ; thus, the epidermis, with
its appendages, may be largely regarded, as the latest, or
final, organic result of the peripheral, or sensory, nerve
excretory process, while the muscular fibre structures may
likewise be regarded, to some extent, but to some extent
only — the exceptions being interstitial nerve products — as
the final stage of motor nerve cell excretion, or elimina-
tion— the sympathetico-systemic system, also, having its
excretory contents disposed of, used up, or spent, in
aiding in the execution of the various duties to which it
becomes subservient, in the economy of the involuntary
operations of the muscular system. This process of
excretion, or, what may be regarded as, the final stage of,
or in, the nerve developmental evolution of the nerve
cell, and nuclear products, takes place, in, and on, the
free surfaces of the skin of the body generally, where
the epidermal scales are shed, as Milton says, " Thick as
autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa,"
in, and on, the free surface of the mucous, and serous,
membranes, and linings of the free surfaces within the
body generally, and within the sarco-lemmar coverings of
the muscular fibres, striped, and unstriped, wherever
present, throughout the, length, and breadth, of the
systemically, and sympathetico-systemically, innervated
organism. Thus, we perceive, that a far-reaching vista
of nerve activity, within the sphere of the fundamental
vital, or physiological, processes of, assimilation, nutrition,
disintegration, and excretion, is opened up for investi-
gation, and a prospect of important practical results
presented.
We shall now proceed slightly to elaborate the foregoing
views, in order to make their meaning more plain, and to
explain, in somewhat greater detail, what takes place,
between the ending of the blood circulation within the
neuroglial texture, the beginning of the formative, or
organic, processes, through which the materials left by it
pass, within that texture, and the methods by which, the
residual materials, are finally disposed of.
3 14 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
The structure of the nervous system, as already
explained, is made up of a series of cells, and fibres, or
neurons (see Fig. 1 1 8), the axons of which latter, in
turn, are composed of a series of dual plastic rods,
one cylindrical, and hollow, and one solid, the latter
occupying the hollow in the former, encircled by their
respective tubules of neurokeratin ; the cells are laid
down in, and supported by, a matrix of neuroglia, in
which they are rooted by their dendritic (see Fig. 1 1 8)
processes, through which they extract their nourishment.
This may be regarded, as the primitive, and foundation,
structural condition of the systemic nervous system in all
its parts — alike of the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the spinal
cord, and the ganglionic enlargements of the systemic
nerves, as well as the sympathetico-systemic system.
The cells thus rooted, secrete — and contrary to the
received teaching on the subject, we claim that, they also,
do, and must, excrete — indeed, it would be nothing short,
of " a contradiction in terms," and a physical impossibility,
that it could be otherwise. But, excrete what ? it may be
asked. We answer, that they, necessarily, must, and cannot
do otherwise than, excrete, the substances known, as the
medullary, or " white substance of Schwann/' and the axis
cylinder substance. They, thus, secrete, or provide, the
nutritive materials required for the maintenance of their
contained organisms, the nuclei, and nucleoli, the former
of which, the nuclei, in like manner, secrete from the cell
protoplasm, and excrete the substance of the axis cylinder,
while the nucleoli secrete from the nuclear protoplasm,
what they require, to enable them to continue their,
individual, and independent, existence, and active func-
tional role, and which must, of necessity, and in this case,
contrary to the rule, excrete, or shed, their effete materials
into the, as yet uncontaminated, or only self-contaminated,
nuclear contents, and axis -cylinder protoplasm — these
so-called effete materials, it may be, becoming the intra-
axonal substance, or molecular strand, or channel, for the
conveyance, or passage, of nerve energy, into, or out of,
the cell.
These excretionary substances, do not become fully, or
finally, excreted, or disposed of, until they have made a
THE SYSTEMIC NERVE CELL 315
more, or less, circuitous intra-fibral journey, and performed
a prolonged functional work, of the very highest im-
portance, and of the widest textural range, or until they
reach the limits of the peripheral nerve terminations,
wherever situated, sensory, and motor, systemic, and
sympathetic, alike, where, their functional being com-
pleted, they are finally liberated, by the exfoliating
epidermic, epithelial, and endothelial, cells, and scales,
.and the shedding skin appendages, as well as by the
musculature in which the motor fibres terminate ; besides,
to some extent, we would infer, in a, more or less,
amorphous form, by the sweat glands, and sebaceous
follicles, of the skin, and the various excretory agencies
developed within the texture of the various mucous,
and serous, membranes, of the body. It thus becomes
apparent, that secretions, elaborated by the nerve cells,
their nuclei, and nucleoli, from the surrounding neuroglial
pabulum, have to traverse the entire extent of the axonal
processes of the cells, i.e. the nerve fibres, from their
origin in the cells from which they respectively spring, to
their terminations in the various nerve terminal textures,
or arborisations. This constitutes the inner division of,
what we may term, the great dual systemic nerve circula-
tion, or the combined, or duplex, nervine circulations —
the other being the cerebro-spinal lymph circulation.
The "growth" of the systemic nervous system may,
therefore, be said to begin as, or to consist of, a secretion
from the neuroglial matrix, to end as, an excretion , on the
various free surfaces, and enclosed spaces, in which the
nerve terminals end, and to consist of the stages of,
assimilation by the cells, their nuclei, and nucleoli, of
circulation, by, and through, the neurokeratinous tubes,
or vessels, known as the containing membranes, of the
medullary, or white substance of Schwann, and the axis-
cylinder, respectively, of incorporation with, or in, the
epidermic, epithelial, and endothelial, coverings, and
linings, respectively, as regards the sensory, and sympa-
thetic, distribution, and of the, more, or less, permanent
disposal, in the sarcous elements of the muscles, as regards
the motor distribution, of the nerve fibre terminals, and
of the final, exfoliation, shedding, or excretion, which ensues,
3i6 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
as the closing stage, of a prolonged series of formative,
or integrative, circulatory, and disintegrative, changes.
Thus, the nervous system, the most vital of the many
systems of which the corporeal organic whole is made up,
may be traced from a primary involution, embryonically,
of the epiblast, to a terminal, or final, evolution, or ex-
foliation, in the mature stages of development, of the
same epiblast, after its prolonged passage through the
intricacies of the meso- and hypo-blastic areas, as an
unbroken process of growth, and finally of decay —
representing, what may be denominated, the concluding
stage of the long process of developmental, or organic,
evolution.
Moreover, the various stages, of this long develop-
mental process, represent, a balanced, and ordered, suc-
cession of evolutionary events , the culminating, and
crowning, example, of which is typified, and represented,
by that under discussion — the systemic nervous system,
which constitutes the "end and aim" of the great
organic " sequence of events," exhibited in the life-history
of all the. higher animal bodies. So long, as the integrity
of the nervous system, including here the sympathetic
nervous system, of an animal body, is maintained in
unbroken continuity, so long will the life of that body
be maintained, so soon, however, as its maintenance in
that condition becomes impossible, will the death of that
particular body, in whole, or in part, ensue, according to
the general, or local, incidence, of the pathological con-
ditions by which it is invaded.
The entire nervous system, judging from the oneness
of its functional work, consisting of, trophic, motor,
sensory, and intellectual, activities, must, of necessity, be
one, in histological, and anatomical, continuity, or, at
least, its component parts, must be in material contiguity,
so complete, and intimate, as to permit of functional
oneness, and to ensure that it developmentally projects,
or interjects, itself, into material, and functional, relation-
ship, with every organ, and texture, of the body, thereby,
dominating, and controlling, the functional, and organic
output, in regard to work, and securing its physiologically
measured maintenance, in whole, and in part.
THE SYSTEMIC NERVE CELL 317
The nervous system, thus, becomes the centre, and
potential, or dynamic, mainspring, of the life-work, of all
the highly organised examples of animal life, besides being,
itself, the peculiar, and cryptic, material region, in which
repose the inscrutable mysteries of life, and intelligence,
with all their attendant attributes, and entities, material,
and immaterial.
Though composed of innumerable quasi-independent
centres, and areas, but being, one, and indivisible, ana-
tomically, and histologically, through the complete organic
continuity of its component neurons, it must inevitably
follow, that its functional work, or activity, in part, and
in whole, must be conformable to, and controllable for,
both local, and general, purposes — each neuron, thus,
representing a quasi-independent organism, as well as,
being an individual member of the great nerve com-
munity, or commonwealth, so to speak, and extracting
its support from the common neuroglial soil in which the
entire nervous system is rooted, and from which it grows
by dendritic absorption. From this common neuroglial
soil, cerebral, cerebellar, spinal, and ganglionic, all
systemic, and sympathetico-systemic, nerve cells, alike,
derive their nourishment, converting it into the necessary
protoplasm for supplying the nutritional wants of their
respective nuclei, and nucleoli, with their axonal continua-
tions. The cell protoplasm, or such part of it as is
utilised in the support of the nucleus, and nucleolus,
passes, or grows, along the axons, or axonal processes, in
the form of the medullary, or " white substance of
Schwann," and the axis cylinder substance, and is finally
shed, by the various nerve terminals throughout the
entire nervous system, in the form of, more, or less,
plastic, and organisable pulp, which ends, as a material
addition to the substance of the epidermic, epithelial, and
sarcous, elements, wherever it may happen to be shed, or
accordingly as it may be finally disposed of preparatory
to removal, as effete, and worn-out material, with the
exception of the addition made, by the motor " terminal
plates," to the discs, or cells, of the muscle fibres, where,
it is conceivable, it may perform further important,
material, and functional, duties, in maintaining the latent
3i 8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
potentiality, and contractility, of these muscle fibres, by
becoming, in fact, a nutritive pabulum, for their growth,
and maintenance. Moreover, it seems impossible to
assume that the very large amount of white, or medullary,
and axis cylinder, substances, which must be discharged
from the motor nerve " end plates," or terminals, can be
otherwise disposed of, than in supplying the nutritive
material necessary for the wants of the great muscular
system, and, so, of keeping up that intimate, material,
and functional, or materio-dynamic, union, of nerve, and
muscle, so essential for the proper discharge of the
complex duties, of meeting the requirements of volition,
as well as, those of conveying involuntary impulses for
automatic movements, single, and co-ordinated, alike —
and that, therefore, this matter, or substance, does not
become effete, until it has discharged, or contributed to
discharge, the function of muscular contraction, with its
accompanying waste, when, we may take it that it is
discharged, or conveyed, into the systemic lymphatic
system, via the muscle tendons, periosteal textures, and
associated bone matrix, and medulla, and so into the
blood stream, for final disposal — in contrast to the final
elimination of the, medullary, and axis-cylinder, substances,
characterising the sensory nerve terminals.
In still further detail we would remark that the nucleus,
in like manner with its parent cell, forms or secretes the
protoplasm of its body, that protoplasm being retained in
position by its encircling or containing wall, from which it
in turn passes or grows along, or as the axis cylinder
separated from the medullary or white substance by a con-
tinuation or prolongation of the neurokeratinous nuclear
envelope until it arrives at the confines of the indivi-
dual fibres, where it undergoes the process of final disposal
or elimination by the various forms of nerve terminal
arrangements, as effete, but not yet quite functionally
exhausted material. The organised materials composing
the medullary substance and the axis cylinder substance
alike circulate from the cells and nuclei respectively to the
boundaries of the nervous system — on the skin and mem-
branes, in the substance of the parenchymatous textures and
within the sarcolemmar coverings of the muscular fibres,
THE SYSTEMIC NERVE CELL 319
and being plastic or fluid enough to circulate, they are con-
stantly liable to suffer from stases and disturbances of their
continuity within the lumina of the tubes or containing
walls along which they are moving or circulating, from " a
thousand and one " causes. We would expect, therefore,
to find that their onward and outward movement is safe-
guarded and secured against the possibility of destructive
regurgitation, and we think we have discerned the existence
of the required means in the cellular and fibral arrange-
ments and re-arrangements within the brain cord and nerves,
the last mentioned and the nerves being specially protected
by the introduction and continuous reproduction, it may
be, of the histological textures known as the " nodes of
Ranvier," which have already been described, and which,
we claim, allow of an efferent, but prevent an afferent
movement of the intra-neuro-fibral contents.
The nutrition of the textures in question, viz. the
medullary and axis cylinder, with their enclosing or
containing walls, may be accepted as taking place, from the
matrix of the neuroglia, by the exercise of the inherent
selective and assimilative, or vital, powers, or properties of
the cell dendrons, determined and sustained by their con-
tained nucleoli, the presence of which latter is to be
regarded as essential to nerve cell existence.
We are warranted here, we think, in concluding that
nowhere does communication exist between the nutritive
materials, directly or immediately, which pass from the
haemal to the neural structures, save by the intervention
or carrying agency, so to speak, of the neuroglial textures —
nutrition of the neurons being universally due to, or
effected by, the selective influence exercised on the passing
blood streams by the neuroglial texture, through which the
required pabulum is supplied to the widely deployed and
constantly foraging dendrons of the waiting and hungry
cells.
Thus we may regard the systemic nervous system as a
system within a system, or rather within a system of sys-
tems, and we may look upon these systems as being only
"the means to the end " of supporting and ministering to
the wants of a contained central material organism, capable
of being energised and wrought upon by an immaterial
32o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
agency, or directing power, which the materialist and
spiritualist alike are compelled to name and to regard as
the ego — the living principle not detectable by any scientific
processes,, but representing, or remaining, the irreducible
residuum of the organised body after the dissolution of all
its material parts, the then nature and whereabouts of
which, and of what still exists, constituting the unfathomable
mystery so warmly discussed by divine and scientist all
along the ages, and affording a theme for the considera-
tion of the transcendentalist, at once hoary with age and
verdant with eternal youth.
These evolutional arrangements originate primarily in
the earliest embryonic histological disposals of the epiblastic
elements, by means of which the meso- and hypo-blastic
areas are inter-penetrated, innervated, and traversed, until
their boundaries are reached, when they culminate and con-
clude by assisting to form the external coverings, the
internal linings, and the muscular textures of the entire
body.
In concluding this somewhat inconsequent study, we
would remark that inside all these complex envelopes and
investitures of cell wall, cell protoplasm, nuclear wall and
nuclear protoplasm, and nucleolar wall, is disposed the
deepest and smallest of all corporeal organised particles, the
nucleolus, an apparently independent entity texturally, but
functionally, we think, most intimately related with its
environment, and apparently connected with the most
important duties of, receiving, producing, conserving,
disposing, and transmitting, nerve impulse, and energy,
a tiny material organism, responsive to the most delicate
molecular disturbance, conserving unexhausted nerve
energy, originating, and transmitting, nerve impulse —
ranging from the most delicate, or "pale cast" of, thought,
to the most explosive, and disruptive, motor " con-
vulsions, in action individually gentle, collectively, cyclonic.
Who will portray, or is it possible even to discover, by
means of the employment of the most transcendental
scientific experimental process, the subtle scheme, by which
these wonders are wrought ? May it not be, that a
radium-like molecular strand of nucleolar substance, or
protoplasmic material, projects itself along the innermost
THE SYSTEMIC NERVE CELL 321
core of each axis-cylinder, affording a pathway, along
which nervine messages are carried to and fro, and
through which the presiding ego acts, and is reacted upon,
by the non-ego ? Here, however, all is mystery, in the
solution of which, observation, and experiment, seem alike
helpless, we, therefore, bid adieu to the alluring subject,
hoping to take it up again, when an opportunity for
its metaphysical study shall present itself.
EXTRACT XXVIII. b.
ON THE PSYCHIC, OR MENTAL, BRAIN CELLS.
Since writing the foregoing, we have continued to pursue
enquiries into the, histology and histogenesis, of that
neuronal area, in which the phenomena of mind proper,
or intellect, and cogitation, are produced, or evolved,
and have become possessed of the thought, and belief,
that the two aspects, or areas, of systemic innervation,
viz. the sensory, and motor, are texturally joined, and
functionally united, for purposes of systemic administration,
and co-ordination, by a central area of, mental, or quasi-
independent, neurons, which, for histological distinction, we
have named psychic^ and which, for a great part of our
waking time, continue active, while the other two are,
as it were, " switched off." Thus, during the waking
state, unless the sensorium is engaged receiving sensory
impressions, or discharging motor impulses, it follows,
as a functional necessity, that it must be engaged in other
work, conscious, and, it may be, sub-conscious, inasmuch,
as its absolute functional abeyance is inconsistent with
psychological experience, and law, and, therefore, that
a part of that sensorium, and neuronal economy, continues
to cogitate, or perform purely mental work, and to keep
up the continuity of the process of cerebration. In that
part of the process of cerebration, in which the histological
channels of sensory, and motor, innervation, are, for the
time, closed, and during which, it may be, a " connected
process of thought " is being, evolved, or elaborated, or
a general process of thinking at large indulged in, we are
compelled to conclude, that an area, of the central
THE PSYCHIC BRAIN CELLS 323
cerebro-neuronal materio-dynamic machinery, continues
active, in the purely mental, or psychic, strata of cerebral
texture, independently performing purely intellectual
work, which, during the condition of sleep, or from
traumatic, or toxic, influence, may also be "switched off"
from the immaterial ego — this " switching off" represent-
ing a physiological provision, for the mutual rest, and
recuperation, both of mind, and body, by which the
material mechanism of cerebration is overhauled, and
the generation, and re-distribution, of nerve energy,
effected, for physiological, and psychic necessities.
Psychic neurons may, therefore, be supposed to effect
the union of sensory, and motor, neurons, respectively,
by virtue of their axonal processes, becoming histologically
continuous with the neurons, on either side, without
necessarily terminating in, any specific nerve terminal
arrangement, other than that of direct, or modified, histo-
logical continuity. Such a central uniting area of neuronal
structures, must, it is conceivable, represent a somewhat
large proportion of those peripheral grey, and central
white, textural developments of the brain proper, without,
necessarily, requiring to be continued along the lines of
either the sensory, or motor, nervatures, proper, and,
therefore, to be within easily available reach of the
operation of the mechanism, and hypnotic influence, of
cerebral imbibition.
The psychic area of neurons, thus, represents a region
of cerebral structure of indefinite dimensions, compara-
tively free from the disabling, or paralysing, influence,
of purely sensory, or motor, neuronal molecular changes,
and, therefore, secures for intellectual cerebration the
means of continuing its operations, when all around, it
may be, is reduced to complete functional inability, and
temporary paralysis. This condition of functional inde-
pendence, and aloofness, of the psychic neurons, is well
illustrated, by the onset of sleep, and the renewal of conscious-
ness after sleeps very variable, and indefinite periods of
time, and psychological state, no doubt, but in this,
it may be said, both the sensory, and motor, neurons,
exist in a state of functional abeyance, quite, or almost
entirely, complete, while the psychic neurons are still,
324 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
or become, functionally active, and capable of performing
good work, both quantitatively, and qualitatively, but,
more especially, after awaking ; hence, it is frequently
found, that a problem, which has been engaging much
attention previously, is revealed in "early waking"
thought, displaying itself almost spontaneously, in full
proportions, and true perspective, without apparent mental
effort.
Such is the cerebral habitat or, " home, of the ego"
and such is some of the work done therein, by the
true psychic neuronal textures, constituting the debat-
able cerebral region, dividing the two great areas of
sensory, and motor, neural activity, in which are dis-
played the phenomena of afferent, and efferent, inner-
vation, and affording a buffer region of neutrality, and
calm, in which can be displayed the processes of
thought, intelligence, and will, with all that characterises
the mental outlook of the genus homo, as distinguished
from his zoological, neighbours, and friends.
Neurologists hold, that both afferent, and efferent
neurons, are histologically produced, and evolved, once
for a//y non-renewal following on their destruction ; and
the truth of the opinion becomes abundantly evident,
when we consider that both nervatures correspond, in
number, and extent, of terminal extensions, with the
extent of sensory surface, and the number of muscular
fibres, to be innervated, by the respective, sensory, and
motor, nervatures. Whether the same doctrine may
apply to the intermediate, or psychic, neurons, it would
be highly interesting, and instructive, to know, but,
here, the structures to be examined, are so minute, and
complex, in their distribution, that it may easily be
that the most elaborate research may fail to reveal this ;
however, we are warranted in saying, that, it is quite
possible, there may be a difference in their histogenesis,
which will allow of a growth, and increase, in the intelli-
gence, during adult life, or after the growth of the body
has ceased, and the afferent, and efferent, nervatures have
reached their climax, or limit, of development, by increase
in growth, and extent, of their dendritic, and axonal
processes, if not of their actual numbers.
THE PSYCHIC BRAIN CELLS 325
It may well be dependent on some such histological
increase of the psychic stratum of neurons, that the
lessening, or shrinkage, of the, sensory, and motor, strata,
of the cerebral matrix, is " made up for," or structurally
substituted, and that the increase in extent of intelligence,
and depth of knowledge, is sustained, until such time,
as senile changes begin mentally to manifest themselves,
or as involution seizes on the materio-psychic being, and
" closes the scene."
EXTRACT XXIX.
ON THE PSYCHIC OR MENTAL BRAIN CELLS.
The psychic or mental neurons, as we have said, constitute
the peculiar habitat of the mind, and, in the waking state,
are ever engaged, more or less, actively in the performance
of what constitutes mental work, conscious and sub-con-
scious, the latter resembling reflex action in the domain of
neuro-muscular activity.
Mental cerebration occupies, on a rough estimate, two-
thirds of a human lifetime and must, therefore, have, for
the material accommodation of its neuronal machinery, a
proportionate area of grey matter and correspondingly
great dynamic facilities. Both these desiderata are, we
think, abundantly supplied by the unclaimed areas of grey
matter, or those not yet appropriated by the exponents of
cerebral functional localisation, and, indeed, it may be
assumed that mental neurons must be in immediate
contiguity, if not continuity, with all the cerebral areas
in which non-mental function is localised. We, therefore,
would claim that the greatest proportion of the grey
matter of the cerebrum is engaged in the work of mental
cerebration and that " linked up " to it are the areas to
which definite neuro-dynamic functions have been assigned.
Be this as it may, however, the enormous areas quite
untouched by the claims of localisation give to the
requirements of psychic activity just that range of choice,
so to speak, and that wealth of immediate availability
which its supreme importance in the neuro-dynamic work
of the organism requires and demands.
What position the psychic neurons occupy locally in
THE PSYCHIC BRAIN CELLS 327
relationship to the sensory and motor neurons it is
impossible to say, so far as observation and experiment
up to now warrant any statement on the subject. It
must of necessity be, however, that the cerebral neuronal
commonwealth is so layered, or intermixed, that the
linkage of the sensory, or afferent, and the motor, or
efferent, with the psychic neurons is so intimate and
direct as to require direct or continuous but insulatable
and breakable histological continuity, and functional inter-
dependence and oneness.
Viewed thus it becomes apparent that both the afferent
and efferent, or sensory and motor, neurons, when long
in active functional employment, become exhausted and
require uncoupling from the psychic neurons, and that
these latter likewise require rest, and so, when one psychic
neuronal area has become exhausted from too prolonged use,
another, or other, fresh areas can be called upon to take
up the work of psychic cerebration until such time as the
fatigued neurons have sufficiently recovered their psychic
tone so as to be able to resume the work of active psychic
cerebration. If it is consistent with universal experience
that psychic cerebration is most effective, and successful,
when freed from the necessity of attending to the calls of
afferent and efferent, or sensory and motor, innervation,
it follows that the periods of awaking from sound sleep,
and before the sensory and motor neurons have had time
to disturb the flow of psychic cerebration, and when the
sensory and motor neurons have been completely inhibited
from the psychic, coincide with the periods of most suc-
cessful psychic cerebration, or intellectual exercise.
These views, histologically regarded, are consequently
consistent with the ideas that the three forms of neurons,
viz. the psychic, or mental, the sensory, and the motor,
are each, and all, locally present, in a greater or lesser
extent, in every section of cortical space and contained
neurons within any and every area of the cerebral grey
matter, and that the histological requirements of the
doctrine of cerebral functional localisation do not preclude
the existence in juxtaposition of all three forms of neurons.
We may, therefore, take it that within the entire area of
the grey matter of the cerebrum we have to deal with a
328 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
combination of the three forms of cerebral neurons, and
that the white substance, in so far as it consists of the
axonal processes of the sensory and motor neurons, con-
nects the psychic neurons with the outer world and
ministers to the requirements of consciousness and
intelligence.
EXTRACT XXX. a.
ON THE NEURONS, GENERALLY.
The central or systemic nervous system, growing out
of, and supported by, the neuroglia, may be regarded
as, a congeries of neurons, and each neuron may be
regarded as consisting of a cell, with its contained nucleus,
and nucleolus, the cell, by its wall, and contents, being
continuous with the " white substance of Schwann," and
its containing sheath, the nucleus, by its wall, and con-
tents, being continuous with the axis cylinder, and its
containing sheath, while the nucleolus rests within these,
as an independent body, to which, we are of opinion,
the sensory nerve impulses are conveyed, and in which,
if unexhausted, they may be retained, or converted into
motor impulses, and discharged; or where, on the other
hand, if the impulses, or molecular nerve force move-
ments, be highly specialised, as when they come direct
from the senses, they may remain stored up, and available
for future psychic use, as are, the negatives of the
photographer, or as electric power in, Leyden jars, or
the "accumulators" of the electric engineer.
The highest types of these neurons may be looked for
in the cerebral cortex, and here the individual cells
may be seen, taking root in, and from, the neuroglia,
by apical, and collateral, dendrites, dendritic processes,
or dendrons — these processes, more especially the apical,
terminating in free radical extensions, from which, in
turn, bud-like processes, or gemmules, project into the
surrounding neuroglial substance, apparently, in a manner
analogous to the rootlets of a plant, where they imbibe
330 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
by osmosis, the materials required for nerve nutrition,
while the collateral, or parietal, dendrons, extend horizon-
tally, by continuations of the cell wall, it may be, in
union, or interlacement, with those of neighbouring cells ;
thus forming a supporting structure, or framework, apart
from, but in conjunction with, the neuroglial, nbro-cellular,
and unorganised substance, or glial cement.
The cells being thus fixed, and nourished, grow in a
direction opposite to their apical, or radical, terminations,
viz. in the direction of the axis cylinders, or axons, issuing
from them, and thence continuously, by peripheral ex-
tensions, until the first synapse, or the first intercepting
ganglionic cells are encountered, or interjected, in their
course, until they terminate as motor fibres in the various
muscular structures of the body, and limbs, until they
end in the sense organs, or in the general peripheral
cutaneous nerve endings, or until, by communicating
filaments to the sympathetic nervous system, they end
within the parenchyma of the various organs, or on the
free surfaces of the various cavities, or hollow spaces, of
the body.
The form of neuron, here described, may be regarded
as, typical, or characteristic, of all the neurons individually,
which go to make up the structure of the systemic nervous
system as a whole.
The nerve cell of the cortex cerebri, varies in size, and
shape, according to its position, depth, etc. ; the nerve cell
of the lower centres, is also characterised by variety of
size, and shape, differences of function, and relationship,
probably being the determining causes of this. The nerve
substances, entering into the axonal structures of a
neuron, are divided into medullary, and non-medullary,
the latter consisting of the axis cylinder, the central, and
conducting, part, of the nerve mechanism, an axilemmar,
or containing, sheath, surrounded by the former, the
V white substance of Schwann, " with its containing sheath,
or neurilemma.
The cell is, thus, the investing substance, in which the
true nerve elements, the nuclei, and nucleoli, and axonal
fibres, are developed, and maintained, and, in, and from,
which they grow, its chief function being that of select-
ON THE NEURONS, GENERALLY 331
ing, and conveying, the needful nourishment for their
maintenance, and insulating them from contact with the
surrounding neuroglial structures, and capillary blood-
vessel mechanism.
Being thus protected, insulated, and nourished, the
nuclei, with their contained nucleoli, become subservient
to, and perform the functions of producing, receiving,
conserving, and distributing, of nerve force, the former,
the nucleus with its continuation, the axis-cylinder, acting
the part of conveyancer, the other parts of this compli-
cated work being performed by the latter, the nucleolus,
the only "independent" structure, in the hierarchy of the
higher nerve elements, or bodies.
The axis-cylinder of the nerve fibrils, may be regarded
as continuous with the intra-nuclear substance, in its
inmost, or most intimate, molecular aspect, and the
" white substance of Schwann/' or medullary substance,
as continuous with the contents of the cell body proper.
The nucleoli must, thus, transmit, or convey, their con-
tained, and produced, energy, directly into the substance
of the axis cylinder of the fibrils, while the " white sub-
stance of Schwann," encased in its primitive sheath, and
lined by the axilemma, performs the functions of, insula-
tion, and protection.
The various structural elements of the neuron, are
formed, or secreted, and circulated, although in a very
different manner from the cerebro-spinal fluid, and are
excreted, or exuded, in a likewise very different manner,
the semi -solid, or plastic, materials, constituting, the
a white substance of Schwann," and the axis cylinders,
suffering an organised excretion, so to speak, in the
form of epidermic scales, and appendages, epi- and endo-
thelial cells, and scales, and the sarcous elements of
muscle fibres. The quantity of material, thus removed
from the body, must be regarded as largely, if not
entirely, due to nerve fibre growth, and circulative dis-
integration, and elimination, but of course impossible of
measurement by any known means — roughly speaking,
however, we may regard the rate of shedding, of epidermic,
and epithelial, scales, and the growth of hair, and nails,
with the maintenance of muscular fibre, generally, as, to
332 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
some extent, affording an index of the rate of nerve cell
secretion, and nerve fibre growth. Should this estimate
be even approximately correct, we at once see that the
rate of nerve cell secretion, must be relatively, a great
one, and, therefore, that the denied function of nerve cell
excretion must be one of corresponding proportions and
dimensions, and, in fact, one of the largest, and most
omnipresent, of all the excretions of the body.
The skin, or cutaneous covering, of the whole body,
with the mucous, and serous, linings of the various
passages, and cavities, large, and small, occurring within
the body, represent, respectively, the areas of distribution,
of the systemic afferent, or sensory, and the sympathetico-
systemic nerve terminals, the muscular structures, striped,
and unstriped, representing, in like manner, the respective
areas of distribution, of the systemic motor, and the
sympathetic, nerve terminals. Each of these terminals,
has a form, and method, of terminal distribution, of its
own, determined by the anatomical structure, and nervine
requirements, of the tissue to which it is distributed,
generally known by the name of arborisation, each of these
arborisations being, the terminal expansion of a nerve
fibril, and known by various names, according to the
particular, form, shape, or manner, of its termination.
Each of these arborisations, or terminal expansions,
moreover, represents the process, and manner, of exuda-
tion, or excretion, of the plastic component parts of a
nerve fibril, and constitutes the final act of growth, of the
individual nerve fibril, and its originating nerve cell —
death, and disintegration, of the detaching material follow-
ing, as soon as its vital connection, or attachment, ceases.
Thus, the processes of life and death, follow each other,
in the experience of every scale shed, and every organised
particle released, from the sensory nerve organism, the
vital connection, however, being still for a while main-
tained, when the motor terminal fibrils shed their contents,
into the sarcous discs of the muscular tissues.
In the process of shedding, as seen in the breaking down
of the sensory nerve terminal expansions, and the filling
up of the voluntary muscle fibre discs, and unstriped
muscle cells, by the motor nerve terminal expansions, we
ON THE NEURONS, GENERALLY 333
have displayed to us, the concluding stage, of the develop-
ment, and growth, of every peripheral neuron, sensory,
and motor ; the opening stages being the formation of
the parent cell, with its nucleus, and nucleolus, and the
projection of an axonal process along a nerve trunk, and
finally its, outgrowth, and expansion, or termination, in the
concluding intricacies of the nerve terminal developments.
This, therefore, we hold, proves, that every axonal
nerve fibre originating from a cell (and they all originate
thus), can only grow in a direction leading from that cell,
that is, along the axon, which leads from it, as distinguished
from its dendrons, which lead to it, and that, consequently,
the long vexed question, of the direction of the growth of
nerve, may be now regarded as settled, without the possi-
bility of cavil, because it is settled on lines, dictated, and
determined, by, and through, the medium of nerve histo-
logical continuity, and not by the manner, or direction, of
the performance of nerve function, or the passage of nerve
energy. In concluding, or summing up, thus, we must
be understood as denying that nerve terminal extensions,
by whatever name known, are in any respect to be
regarded as nerve cells, or neuronal units, and, hence,
affirming that it is impossible for a process of growth to
be established, or maintained, by them, and that, therefore,
growth, and renewal, of nerve, from its distal extremity,
is an impossibility.
EXTRACT XXX. b.
ON THE NEURON, OR NERVE UNIT.
The study of the neuron may be pursued, along the
individual line, so as to afford a clearer view of the united,
or general, lines, when we come to take up the subject of
the neurons, in their co-relations to each other, and to
the, so-called, non-nervous structures of the body. The
neuron, as we have already said, is composed of a cell,
with its contained, nucleus, and nucleolus, having attached
to its outer, or containing, wall, a series of processes, or
projections, called dendrons, or dendrites, together with
one, or more, processes of a special structure, called
axons, which represent the path, or paths, along which
nerve impulses, sensory, and motor, pass, into, or out of,
the cell contents. Covering the cell protoplasm, the
nuclear, and nucleolar, bodies, is a series of neuro-
keratinous containing walls, of a very attenuated, but
resisting, character, which, respectively, support, and
separate, them, and which, with the probable exception of
the nucleolar, are continued along the axons, and, it may
be, to some extent, the dendrons. In the case of these
latter, however, it may be premised, that protoplasmic
separation, gives place to blending, or, at any rate, that
the contained protoplasm has not begun to be, separated
by, or insinuated between, containing walls, in quantity at
all proportionate to that, which is regularly passed along
the axonal processes of the nerve fibres, but yet in sufficient
quantity, to permit of the collateral axonal or dendritic,
communication of nervine molecular changes, between
associated neurons, or groups of neurons, contiguity, if
ON THE NEURON 335
not continuity, being thus secured, and combined, nervine,
and intellectual, operations, made possible.
With the statement, or histological deduction, that the
neuron is incapable of renewal, and that, as the systemic
nervous system begins, so it must continue, so far as the
gross number of its neuronal units is concerned, we find
no fault, except that, it seems impossible, if it be absolutely
true, to account for the extremes, of motor dexterity
acquired, and the intellectual attainments possessed, or
achieved, by certain members of the animal kingdom, and
many individuals, and groups of the human family. In
the face of these occurrences, if the number of the neurons
remains the same, we seemed to be compelled to accept,
of some such view as the following, viz. that the
neuronal bodies remain in numbers unaltered, but that
their textural attachments, prolongations, or processes,
may undergo a change, both of addition, and subtraction,
as when a neuron, or group, of neurons, are kept in
sustained activity, or allowed to remain in functional
abeyance, respectively. In the former, we think, we are
warranted in assuming, that the lateral dendritic processes
undergo a process of, strengthening, and acquired dexterity,
so to speak, from exercise, while the latter droop, and
atrophy, from continued disuse ; this strengthening, and
increased dexterity, so to speak, of amoeboid projection,
of dendritic processes, begotten of continued, and well-
directed, use, would, therefore, appear to meet the
requirements of a belief, in the theory of the unalterability
of the original gross number of neuronal units.
From the origin of the first neurons, in the incipient
stages of embryonic development, amid the latent potential
matrix of the epiblastic area, a process of continued, but
strictly limited addition, or accretion, so to speak, of
neuronal units, goes on, whereby the completed systemic
nervous system is built up, and projected into every recess,
and structure, of the meso- and hypo-blastic areas, thereby
assisting in, innervating, vitalising, organising, and sustain-
ing in life, these latter, and maintaining in one, living, and
co-operating, whole, the combined sympathetico-systemic
anatomical elements, of which living animal bodies are
composed. The primitive streak, in succession to the
336 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
germinal spot, may be said to mark the origin of the
systemic nervous system, in its process of evolution from
the primitive developmental elements of the completely
formed spermo-germ body, and to represent the laying
down of the foundation members of the, greater, and
smaller, neuronal structures, comprised within the brain,
cord, and nerves, or systemic nervous system. The
elements of the embryo, from which the systemic nerve
structures are built up, are the first to respond to the
operation of the developmental impulse, and to betake
themselves to organised, and organising, activity, or to
the work of organisation, hence we find that, that organ-
ising work extends, in the directions in which the nerve
textures are, in future, to be discovered by the anatomist ;
the nerve elements would, therefore, seem to initiate,
dominate, and determine, the direction, and manner of
arrangement, of the non-nervous elements of the growing
embryo, consequently, we must recognise, that the nerve
structures, must inter-penetrate, and be co-terminous with,
all organised matter, and, also, that we must find actual
nerve plasma in the elements from which they are developed,
in all parts of the organic whole. These nerve elements,
originating at the centre, and being continued in unbroken
structural sequence to the periphery, of the body of the
embryo, and into its nascent muscles, necessitate not only
an unbroken histological connection, solid, liquid, or
plastic, but a formation, or growth, beginning at the
centre, progressing to the periphery, and muscles, and
terminating there, in exudation, or disruption, or by being
finally shed — this peripheral disposal, taking the organised
forms of, epithelium, epidermis, hair, nails, etc., and the
sarcous elements of muscle.
We are further of opinion, that the " process of growth "
of the systemic nervous system, begins in the sympathetic,
or truly trophic, neurons, if we may call them so, and
that these initiate, the process of growth generally, through-
out the entire area of developmental activity, not only
within the nervous system proper, but throughout the
musculoskeletal, and the whole extent of the, so-called,
non-nervous, living tissues, and organs, — this process of
growth being alike throughout the entire animal kingdom,
ON THE NEURON 337
or at anyrate wherever the elements of a systemic nervous
system are to be detected, whether scattered, or organised ;
therefore, the sympathetic, or trophic, neurons, having
primarily arranged themselves in definite groups, or gangli-
onic aggregations, assign to each of themselves, the super-
intendence of a definite area^ in virtue of which, the life,
growth, and functional activity, of that area, are sustained,
the health of the individual areas, necessarily, eventuating
in the health of the whole. The nervous systems of a
large portion of the lower animal world consist of, just,
such elements as are here described — as we ascend higher,
however, in the scale of being, we see gradually taking
place, the addition of more highly organised parts, to these
almost automatic nervous systems, until, in the highest
ranges of animal life, a brain, spinal cord, and systemic
nerves, are introduced, in increasing completeness, and
complexity, when in the end we realise, in ultimate per-
fection, the union of the systems^ in man himself, each with
its functional role respected, and its material development,
and evolution, fully matured. Further, we are of opinion,
that these two systems, the sympathetic, and systemic, can,
and do, act, both conjointly, and independently, and that
during sleep we see the sustained, and independent action,
of the sympathetic, or trophic nervature, as it is to be
observed in the earliest stages of embryonic existence,
and during paralysis of the cerebro-spinal system in any
particular part, or parts, of the body. We thus perceive,
that the structural integrity of the affected part, or parts,
is maintained by the same instrumentality, but, that while
the life, and structural integrity, of the part, or parts, in
question, are thus maintained, we become conscious, at
times, that changes of a retrograde, or degenerative, char-
acter, are in progress, and that the muscles are undergoing
processes of involution, in virtue of being cut off from the
sustaining, influence, and pabulum, supplied by the motor
nerves distributed to them ; also, that the skin, in like
manner, suffers, from the same deprivation on the part of
the sensory nerves distributed to it, becoming sleek, smooth,
and attenuated (Paget's " glossy skin ") — sometimes to
the proportion of a mere pellicle, in which becomes visible
to the naked eye, as the sensory nervature atrophies, and
Y
33$ BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
recedes, the almost complete mechanism of the cutaneous
blood circulation. The epidermis, with the skin appendages,
and the muscular tissues, generally, having suffered, de-
generative, or obliterative, changes, to a greater, or lesser,
extent, according to the time, and degree, to which the
invading paralysis has extended, the necessity for believing
in the reality of a dual nervous system, becomes established,
and the truth of the opinions, long held, and expressed, by
authorities on the subject, is made manifest.
The neurons, composing the cerebro-spinal nervous
system, would seem to grow, and to be added, according
as the necessity for their production arises, by the increasing
needs of the muscular system, on the one hand, and, on
the other, as the sensory necessities of the organism
become more complicated, and as the awakening, and
growing, intelligence, calls for more, and more, fully
developed nerve instrumentalities, or agencies, to meet its
continually increasing demands. These views coincide
with those arising from a study of the changes undergone
by the evolving, or growing, cerebro-spinal nervous system;
thus, the pre-vesicular stage of its development, coincides
with the entire absence of proper nerve phenomena, apart
from those of mere vegetation, so to speak, while the closing
in, vesiculation, nerve cell genesis, and jibrilisation, of the
nascent nervous system, synchronise with the growth of a
musculature, and its innervation by motor neurons, and
with the projection of the elements of a sensory nerve
mechanism, into the outer coverings, and inner linings, of
the embryonic textures — theprotoplasmic pabulum, required
for the accomplishment of these changes, being supplied
from the latent glioid stores lying within the ovum. After
these early stages of nervine development, and when the
ovum has been exhausted of its available supplies, a cir-
culation is established in the embryo, of the more highly
developed members of the scale of animal life, through
the instrumentality of which, supplies are brought from the
circulation of the maternal structures, and conveyed to the
matrix of the ganglionic nerve centres, where they become
directly available, for nerve cell growth, or are laid down
in the form of a material known as neuroglia, from which
they can in future be taken up, by the nerve cells, as
ON THE NEURON 339
needed, or where they can be retained, as conveniently
available nerve pabulum. These latter changes coincide
with the thickening, and shrinking, or convolution, of the
cerebro-vesicular walls, the partial obliteration, or narrowing
of the neuro-vesicular cavity, and its definite curtailment,
to the proportions of the cerebral ventricles, and the central
canal of the cord, and are co-extensive with the duration
of life, or, at any rate, of that period of life connected with
its adult activities, physical, and mental.
Life, so far as it is dependent on the integrity of the
nerve structures, terminates, in accordance with the manner,
and order, of failure, of the dual nervous organ, first, it
may be, by a break down, in one, or more, parts, of the
cerebro-spinal system, and second, it may be, by failure, in
part, or in whole, of the sympathetic, or trophic system,
the former, not necessarily, terminating the life of the
individual affected, the latter, however, terminating in
death, partial, or complete, accordingly as it is local, or
general — in other words, in gangrene of a part, or in death,
of the whole body, recovery being possible in the former
degree, but impossible in the latter — inevitable deaths partial,
or complete, occurring in all cases, showing that, the inci-
dence of mortal change, is largely, if not entirely, due to
the cessation of trophic changes, thus demonstrating as it,
the sympathetic nervous system, is the first, so it is the
last, part, of the combined nervous system, to dominate,
and maintain, the continuity of vital action, or life.
EXTRACT XXXI. a.
ON NEUROGENESIS, OR NEURONOGENESIS.
Neuronogenesis signifies the origin, and development, of
the Neuronal or Neural unit, the totality of which consti-
tutes the systemic nervous system.
The neuron is generated from the basal neuronic sub-
stance known as the Neuroglia, and owes its origin, there-
fore, to the preparation, and deposition, of that substance
within the blastodermic area known as the ectoderm. This
basal substance in brain, cord, and ganglia, after primary
deposition from the differentiating ovum, originates, and
develops, the spongioblasts, which in turn evolve the indi-
vidual nerve cells, and neural processes, dendritic, and
axonal, which ultimately inter-penetrate, and innervate, the
meso- and hypo-blastic related areas, and constitute, with
the sympathetic nervous system, the dual nervature which
controls, and determines, the vegetative, and higher organic,
life, of the completed organism. The neuron, besides
originating in, and growing from, the neuroglia, continues
to draw from that substance its materio-dynamic supplies,
through which it secondarily unites itself with, and sup-
ports, the structures known as, the skin, and the muscles, by
circulatory transference of matter and energy along the
axonal processes of the sensory, and motor, neurons,
respectively — these axonal processes being hollow tubes,
or vessels, and not impervious filaments.
The nutrition of the systemic nervous system is, there-
fore, due to the continuance of these neurogenetic
conditions on the evolution of the haemal circulation,
when the nutritive plasma is deposited from that circula-
ON NEUROGENESIS 341
tion in the substance of the neuroglial areas, where it
becomes available for absorption by the nerve cell den-
drons, for plastic arrangement by the cell and its nucleus
and nucleolus, for circulatory disposal by the axonal
processes to the related skin, and muscle, structures, by
direct continuity of histological circulatory channels, and
for subsequent structural incorporation with the textural
elements of the skin, and the sarcous elements of the
muscle fibres, through the sensory, and motor, fibres,
respectively. Each neuronal unit, as thus produced, and
nourished, becomes subservient to sensory, motor, or
psychic, purposes, according to its histological position, and
relationships, and remains devoted to its originally assigned
work, so that no one unit can take the place of another,
nor the gap be filled up when one is removed.
Sleep affords a diurnal opportunity for the renewal and
redistribution of neuronal substance, and nerve energy, by
sympathetic nerve agency, and thus becomes the means of
the proper " linking up," and reciprocal, or co-ordinate,
working of the combined systemic, and sympathetic, nervous
systems.
The evolution of the systemic nervature from the neural
division of the neurenteric canal resembles closely the
evolution of the alimentary, and associated, organisms, from
the enteric division of that canal, these two great develop-
mental processes jointly securing the innervation, and
nutrition, and, therefore, the life of the entire organism,
material, and dynamical. In effecting these results we
must recognise the principle of circulation as the chief
instrument, the operation of which along definite lines of
vasculature, and inter-space areas, effects the arrangement of
the formative elements into textures and organs, suitable
for carrying out the organic and functional work of the
living body, by a process of continual transference, whereby
the new elements of food and drink assume the structural
form of every tissue, and finally represent the residual or
complete result of all intra-corporeal vital change, and
activity.
EXTRACT XXXI. b.
ON NEURONOGENESIS, OR NEURAL HISTOGENESIS,
AND NEURAL NUTRITION.
As we have said, the neuron may now be regarded as the
neural unit, and the Systemic Nervous System may be
regarded as the total embodiment of these units, and hence
as the completed nerve hierarchy, in virtue of the
possession of which, in its highest type, man occupies
the crowning position in the evolutionary progress of the
forms of life yet known to science, and the facile princeps
of psycho-physiological developments.
The neuron may be said to exist, merely in embryo, or
anticipation, in the great domain of vegetable life, and in
that of animal life innervated by a sympathetic nervature,
as well as in those structures and organs outside the
systemic nervous system dependent on sympathetic inner-
vation, including the basal substance, and neuro-dynamic
elements, of systemic innervation, psychic, and neural,
cerebral, spinal, and peripheral. That being so, by
closely observing the disposition of the matrix in which the
future systemic nervous system is to be developed, we
become aware of the preliminary preparation of a great
amorphous collection of a somewhat faintly organised
" medullary " substance within the areas of future systemic
neuronogenesis, to be known in the future by the name of
neuroglia, and to be found deposited wherever the neurons
take their origin, whether in the brain, cord, or ganglia.
This substance, the neuroglia, may be regarded as the
materio-dynamic sine qua non of all neuronogenesis, and
the potential matrix, out of which grow, or in which are
ON NEURONOGENESIS 343
planted, produced, and reared, or evolved, the potential cell
elements of the coming systemic nervous system, by the
action, or operation, of the sympathetic, or innate, selective,
and formative, energies of the fertilised ovum, on its stored,
and actively vitalised, material. During this stage of early
embryonal, or blastodermic development, and differentia-
tion, a structure hitherto unknown in the formative
activities of organic perpetuative vitality is thus introduced,
by the advent of the ectodermal into the united, and dual,
regime of meso- and hypo-dermal evolution — a regime which
has hitherto met all the necessities, and requirements, of
vegetable, and vegetative, life, and which has made possible
the introduction of an entirely new, and higher, specific
method of organisation, by which the way has been paved
for the production of the genus homo, with all the distin-
guishing characteristics of humanity, physical, mental and
moral. Thus has been marked one of the greatest epochs
in the history of living forms, as they have existed in the
past, or from the beginning, and one of the most profound,
and far-reaching, of the developmental changes undergone
by the embryonic organism of man.
The ectoderm is the structural foundation laid down by
the sympathetic nervature, and its elements are so arranged
that the formative energies by which they are inspired, so
to speak, initiate, and fully effect, the hitherto unknown
process of neuronogenesis, and lo ! a systemic nervous
system has been added to the economy of organic evolution,
and to the formative activities of the higher animal life.
The process of neuronogenesis resembles that of general
histogenesis, but is specifically different in many of its
details, and organic results ; thus the phenomena of
proliferation, by which the renewal, or substitution, of lost
cells is effected in so-called non-nervous textures, are
conspicuous by their absence, and it follows that systemic
nerve cells once lost are never renewed, and that the
structures dependent for their support on those cells also
perish. Neuronogenesis is effected gradually, as the
ectodermal textural area becomes mingled with, and
incorporated in, the meso- and hypo-dermal textural areas,
single neurons, or groups of neurons, of spongioblastic
origin, being added, more or less rapidly, as the process
344 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
continues, until the whole combined areas have become
one for material, and functional purposes, and a complete
human organism evolved.
The nerve cell as it develops from the spongioblast takes
unto itself structural characteristics, material, and dynamic,
by which it is enabled to traverse, and functionate, the
embryonic elements, to the extent permitted to the
systemic nervous system functionally to affect the meso-
and hypo-dermic areas, while it throws out dendritic
processes, through which it texturally supports itself with
nourishment from the neuroglial matrix, and develops an
axonal process, or processes, through which it effects a
union with distant structures, such as the muscles, and skin,
at the same time evolving within itself a nucleus, and
nucleolus, which perform the specific functions of inner-
vation, and harmonise, and co-ordinate, the working of the
materio-dynamic agencies of the systemic nervature, within
itself, and in union with the sympathetic nervature.
The formation of each neuron is followed by its dedi-
cation to a particular work in the economy of innervation,
either as sensory, motor, or psychic ; or as linking up the
various forms of neurons within the systemic nervature, and
combining in a composite, and co-ordinated, whole, the
dual nervatures, systemic, and sympathetic.
The completed nervous system is, therefore, a compound
of innumerable neurons of differing functional ability,
according to the nature of the particular locale occupied,
and the particular neuronic work entailed by that locale ;
thus they may be — (a) receivers of sensory impression ; (b)
communicators of nerve impulse ; (c) participators in
psychic cerebration, or, (d) vehicles of exchange in the
balancing of the systemic, and sympathetic, nerve energy.
Each neuron secretes, and grows upon, neuroglial
plasma, and, contrary to current belief, excretes, or passes
that plasma, along its axonal process into the texture with
which it is functionally, and histologically, connected ;
thus the two great divisions of the systemic nervous
system terminate in, and become continuous with, the
proper elements of the skin, and muscles, respectively,
and thereby effect both a material, and dynamic, con-
tinuity, and oneness, between the proper neuronal struc-
ON NEURONOGENES1S 345
tures, the dermal envelope, and the musculo- skeletal
framework of the body.
In so doing we must come to the belief, or be forced
to the conclusion, that the doctrine of non-excretion by
the nerve cell is untenable ; and must, therefore, be
prepared to concede that it also excretes, and necessarily
along the lines of least resistance, the lumina of the axonal
fibre, or fibres — the white substance of Schwann, and the
axis cylinder substance, being the materials excreted.
This again presupposes, and necessitates that the axons
of all nerve cells, which have been hitherto regarded as
homogeneous filaments, capable only of transmitting nerve
energy, are twice hollow tubes, enclosing, and transmitting,
respectively, the insulating, or white substance of Schwann,
and the proper neuronic substance — the axis cylinder —
these two substances being due respectively to the selective,
and formative, energies of the cell, and its nucleus, re-
spectively, whose containing walls are continued along each
axonal process as the primitive, or containing, membranes,
of the two substances.
Viewing the neuroglial matrix, as the common neuronal
histogenetic source, and as the result of sympathetic
neuro-dynamic formative activity, both in its original
development, and its subsequent continual renewal, we
discover that its embryonic formation preceded that of
the blood, and its circulation, and that it subsequently
became inter-penetrated by that circulation, and dependent
upon it for nutritive supplies, they being delivered not
directly to the neurons, but laid down amid the feltage
of the neuroglial matrix, to be taken up as required by
the dendritic processes of the individual neurons.
Neuronal nutrition is, therefore, not effected by direct
delivery from the blood vasculature, but through inter-
mediate neuroglial agency, where the neuronal plasma
has been laid down, and stored, for use when neuronal
necessity calls for it, and where it can thus be constantly
obtained, free from the exigencies, and uncertainties, of a
direct blood circulatory supply, and in quantities according
with both particular, and general, neuronal requirements.
This is a nutritive process conducted on somewhat
similar lines to those on which alimentary digestion, and
346 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
absorption, are effected, and may be regarded as what
might be called a secondary digestion of the neuroglial! y pre-
pared plasmal elements. As neuronogenesis determines
the material nature, and functional character, of each
neuronal unit, so the individuality of each is maintained,
by a continual devotion to individual work, amid the many
co-ordinated duties in which it may be called upon to
act, and thus the occurrence of automatic ability becomes
superadded by continuous use within, more or less, definite
limits.
As excretion from the nerve cells necessitates the
existence of hollow axonal processes, so does the onward
passage, or circulation, of the axonal substances require
the provision of outfall spaces into which these substances
can find a means of disposal, or progress, and along which
they can find a means of final disposal ; because it is neither
logical, nor biological, to suppose that living, or organic,
substances, can be otherwise disposed of than by some
form of circulation, or movement, away from, and out
of, the original, and determining, source of movement.
Neuronal circulation must, therefore, find outfall facilities
provided amid the elements of the dermal matrix, on the
one hand, and into the voluntary musculature, on the
other ; and that we contend is what is to be found in
both neuronal modes of axonal termination. In the
former, or sensory, mode of neuronal termination, we
find that the terminal fibrils, in the form of arborisations,
break up into dermal cells, and ultimately into epider-
mal scales, which finally become detached, and fall off,
or exuviate ; while, in the latter, we find that the neural,
and sarcous, elements, become continuous through the
merging of the neurilemma, and sarcolemma, into one
unbroken sheath, in which case we are compelled to
recognise that the proper sarcous substance owes its
origin to the original neuronogenesis, and neural circu-
lation of the white, or medullary, and the axis cylinder,
substances. Thus we see, and consider ourselves warranted
in claiming, that the neurons are productive alike of nerve
energy, and nervine substances, and that the latter are
circulated along their axonal processes, and become struc-
tural elements in the growth, and maintenance, of skin,
ON NEURONOGENESIS 347
and muscle, respectively — the truth of which statements
is at once negatively obvious in the pathological con-
ditions known as — to mention only two, " glossy skin,"
and " myopathy." Hence, the formidable, but altogether
reasonable, conclusions, must be drawn, that the external
endowment of the human body known to science, art,
and poetry, as the skin, and those structures so much
loved, and fondly developed, by the athlete, as the
muscles, are alike the products of silent neural growth
and circulation ; and, therefore that a consistent, and
reasonable, search after, and cultivation of, them, on lines
thus dictated, cannot, and will not, be disappointed,
because founded on the unalterable basis of cause and
effect, of physiological nutrition, growth and development.
Thus a proper nutritive supply, in quantity and quality,
a continued maintenance of the patency of the circulating
ways through which the formative plasma must pass, and
a proper assimilative reception of that plasma by the
cutaneous, and muscular, structures involved, must' of
physiological necessity be followed by altogether un-
objectionable results — being due to the operation of
normal laws, and conditions — while, at the same time,
it cannot be wondered at that the stiffening, and
blanching, effects, of time, lead to whitening, and de-
nudation, of dermal appendages, wrinkling of the once
smooth skin, and shrinking of the once packed, and
resistant, muscles.
Besides our arteries we have, therefore, to reckon with
the neural vasculature, and with the incidents of neural
change, in the estimation of the process of " aging," and
the progress of senility. In ministering to the nutrition
of the systemic nervature in all its parts, and jointly with
the sympathetic nervature, in sustaining the nutrition of
the dermal, and musculoskeletal structures, the neuroglial
matrix may be said to resemble the blood in its nutritional
relationship to the non-nervous structures, so called, of
the body generally, thus from them are taken up, re-
spectively, the nutritive plasma of the sympathetically
innervated structures, and organs, and the systemically
innervated textures, neuronal, dermal, and musculo-
skeletal. The recognition of these facts is sufficient to
348 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
point out, and to prove, that within our bodies there are
two great acting, and determining, entities, which are
known as the sympathetic, and systemic, nervous systems,
inextricably blended for communal functional work, but
which are capable of separate, and independent, action, in
all individual functional effort, the two combining, in the
normal, or physiological conditions on the strictest principles
of reciprocity, inter-dependence, and independence, accord-
ing to systemic, or physiological, requirements ; and the
one, the sympathetic, acting continuously, and the other,
the systemic, acting periodically, or diurnally, according to
well-defined physiological conditions, and laws, while, in
conditions pathologically disturbed, the principles of action
are dominated, and determined, by the strongest, and
most effective, materio-dynamic impulses, with formative
results accordingly as these work out in the physiologico-
pathological struggle.
During the developmental changes taking place in the
process of neuronogenesis, the neurons, as they are evolved
from the neuroglial matrix, become encircled individually
with a peri-saccular, and peri-axonal, sheath, containing a
layer of neural lymph which is projected along the axonal
processes, forming a fluid protection for their delicate
contained structures, and accompanying them to their
terminal extensions, and in addition, where they proceed
along the nerve trunks leaving the cerebro-spinal canal,
being received, and surrounded, with a neurilemmar
extension sheath, continuous with the meningeal linings
of that canal which, in turn, accompanies them to their
final, or terminal distribution in the skin, or muscles, or
along the rami communicantes into the sympathetic
nervature.
Such neuronogenetic anatomico-histological arrange-
ments secure that every unit of neuronal structure is
encircled by membranous envelopes and floated in fluid,
and also that the completely evolved systemic nervous
system in all its parts, is surrounded by, secured to, and
protected from, its non-nervous related structures and
organs, free to perform its manifold functions, material,
dynamic, and physic, with security and precision, with
leakage of its specific materials and energy prevented, and
ON NEURONOGENESIS 349
its faculties of renewal and redistribution of the common
supply of these kept up to the physiological standard.
The systemic nervous system is thus the product of the
sympathetic nervous system, and exists on plasmic matter
provided by that system, as well as largely on potential
energy produced by that system — physiological circum-
stances which ensure absolute precision in the combined
materio-dynamic working of the two systems, and the
greatest possible and best possible output of vital
production, physical, chemical, and vital, on the part of
both systems. Moreover, the highest or psychic form of
work is only possible when the psychic neurons have been
rested and refreshed by inhibition from neural contact,
sensory and motor, in the form of sleep, during which
the ever-active sympathetic nervature renews lost or spent
neuronal energy and material, and refits the mind, the
psychic being, for intellectual occupation or psychic cerebra-
tion, and the sensory and motor nervatures, as well as the
musculoskeletal structures, for another period of activity.
The histological continuity or contiguity of the entire
units of the neuronal commonwealth, its growth from the
same nutritive matrix, and their circulational distribution
to the skin, and musculoskeletal framework of the body,
by its sensory and motor axons respectively, provide a
self-contained materio-dynamic organism, which, with its
sympathetic partner, is capable of performing a kind and
an extent of work altogether unapproached in the scale of
animal performance and reserved for man alone.
In conclusion, we would generalise to the effect that
although the ectodermal extension into the meso- and
hypo-dermal areas somewhat overshadows, in extent and
importance, the mutual extension of these two latter into
the domain of purely neuronic growth and development,
it is more apparent than real, inasmuch as it is found that
all three have been progressing on lines mutually
advantageous and necessary to complete the future
complete organism. Thus, as the neuronal axons become
structurally one with the muscle plates, the axonal
circulation finds a ready prepared non-neuronal textural
basis into which it can empty its contents along definite
lines and in definite quantities, and which, guided by these
35o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
lines in definite direction, at length becomes the sarcous or
true muscle substance of the invaded muscle plates, and
thereafter become arranged in relation to the future
skeleton according to the specific requirements of every
part of the organism in regard to movement and the
other functions of a muscular system.
In this developmental process we see the same
evolutionary principles and factors at work as we see in
the formation of the alimentary canal, and its related
digestive and circulative agencies for purposes of the
preparation of the raw materials of the food for the
purposes of future nutrition, and in the elaboration of a
blood circulatory machinery which will carry these
elements of nutrition to every structure of the body, and,
with its related lymphatic vasculature, perform the
functions of a great drainage system, all which formative
phenomena in their organic results but prove the
universality of the principle of circulation as the actuating
and guiding agency in the vital work and physiological
activities of the human, and all animated bodies, and that
there are no insuperable obstacles or impervious barriers
to the regulated onward passage of nutritive as well as
effete material, either in mass or in molecule, a truth
expressible by the paraphrase : — circulatio circulationumy
omnia circulatio.
EXTRACT XXXII. a.
ON WHAT IS SIGNIFIED BY THE EXPRESSION— "THE
NERVOUS SYSTEM," IN CONNECTION WITH LIFE,
NUTRITION, AND VITAL RESULTS.
The nervous system is an expression, the origin of which
it would be as interesting to know, as it would be difficult
to discover, as the history of medicine, from a very remote
period, would have to be ransacked for the first mention,
in the abstract form, of the subject.
So remote, however, from the modern understanding of
what is meant by the expression, would that knowledge be,
that our ignorance is not altogether a matter for regret,
inasmuch as, did we know, we would be compelled to
unlearn much, before we could take up the subject of its
present-day signification, with the hope of still further,
adding to its true interpretation, and aiding its adaptation
to the solution of, practical, as well as, transcendental,
neural problems.
What then, in short, do we mean to convey by the
phrase, "The Nervous System" ? We mean to convey,
among other things, that it is responsible for the existence
of life, that it determines the operation, and administers
the laws, of life, within the organic body, and that, through,
and by, it, is afforded a means, whereby psychic phenomena
are made possible of accomplishment, and the higher, or
immaterial, and dynamic, destinies, of man, evolved, and
added to, the possessions of this last born, of all the races
of animate beings.
The nervous system, in man, and the higher animals,
is a dual organism, composed of two systems, called,
352 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
respectively, sympathetic, and systemic, and these two
systems comprise all the nervous, and so-called non-nervous,
living tissues, systems, and organs, of the body, i.e. they
not only, vitalise, innervate, and co-ordinate, these tissues,
and organs, but, in the true sense, constitute them, those
belonging to the lower organic, or vegetative, department,
of the organism, constituting the sympathetic nervous
system, and those belonging to the higher organic, or
voluntary, and psychic, constituting the systemic nervous
system. The whole living structures of the body, there-
fore, are claimed, as nervous, and belong to one, or the
other, of the two nervous systems, the only exception, if
exception it can be called, being where the two systems
intermingle, or overlap, in which cases, there is structural
provision for dual control in the performance of common
functions, the two possessing the power of acting con-
jointly, while able, at the same time, to do the work indi-
vidually, and independently, when called upon, from any
cause, physiological, or pathological, to do so.
Life, therefore, with all that it implies, is the product of
the nervous system, and the outcome of its vital action,
and the play of its energy, on the raw materials, or inert
matter, on which its organic continuance is dependent, and
the supply of which, constitutes the living organism's great
daily necessity.
The nervous system being, thus, responsible for the
maintenance of life, and the fashioning of the material
structures by which the functions of life are performed,
must, necessarily, be in the most direct union and sym-
pathy, structurally and functionally, with the whole living
organism ; what then more essential than, that it should
actually constitute that organism, supplying the pabulum on
which it exists, and keeping in functional, oneness, and
mutual dependence, both the material, and the dynamic,
results, of its entire organic work, vegetative, and
voluntary ?
The central organic work of nutrition, therefore, is
effected by the nervous system, by itself, for itself, through
the co-working, for communal purposes, of that vast array
of structural arrangements, and adaptations, of cell, and
fibre, canal, and vessel, tissue, and organ, nerve, muscle,
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 353
and bone, which together, make up the living human
body. Evolution, here, from the unicellular into the multi-
cellular organism, by gradual structural accretion, and
advancement in organic complexity, has secured the
control, and working, in harmony, under nervine adminis-
tration, of this vast organic cosmos, as it has done, in
every other observable sphere throughout the domain of
nature, animate, and inanimate. " The Nervous System "
is, therefore, synonymous with what constitutes the living
body, being, at once, the dynamic source of life, and the
organic controller, and sustainer, of the formative impulses,
by which development has proceeded, from cell to cell, and
tissue to tissue, until the completion of the organism has
been effected, when it, still, is able under ordinary circum-
stances, to maintain its vital continuity for a certain period,
or until the, forces, and conditions, of dissolution, more
than counterbalance those of life.
The nervous system, thus, warrants us, in claiming for
it, a position of ubiquity, and importance, in the living
human body, comparable only to that claimed for the
principle of circulation, where we embodied the idea in
these words : circulatio circulationum, omnia circulatio ; we
would, therefore, advance the opinion, that a similar
form of words is required, to express, and to accentuate,
its truth, viz. nervus nervorum omnia nervus.
The nervous system, or organic all-in-all, becomes,
therefore, the living framework, or loom, through which
the "weft and the woof" of life are passed, and woven
into the duplex fabric, of organic work, and of " thought,
word, and deed," by the agency of continuous circulation,
material, and dynamic, determined, and operated, by vital
activity, in obedience to the " laws of life," and the
" presiding ego," and its implied sympathetic and
systemic, " division of labour," and the resultant dual,
and communal, output.
EXTRACT XXXII. b.
ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE SYSTEMIC NERVOUS
SYSTEM.
The systemic nervous system is evolved from the wall of
the posterior, or dorsal, limb, of the neurenteric canal,
which has been separated from, and reunited to, the anterior,
or ventral, limb, by the interposition of metamorphic
textures, which afterwards serve to keep them in continued
modified structural, and functional, relationship. The
metamorphic textures, here meant are those forming the
outlet channels surrounding the olfactory projections of the
anterior cerebral vesicle, together with the optic, and otic,
outlets, the pituitary outlet from the cerebral infundibulum,
and the coccygeal outlet, or termination, of the spinal
meningeal cavity, and the thecal investment of the cord,
represented by the filum terminale, and its coccygeal
termination — all of which outlets persist to the end of life,
and maintain, or afford, facilities, for the excretionary dis-
posal of superabundant cerebro-spinal fluid, and waste,
cerebral and neural, material. This excretional provision
is supplemented, and completed, by the sweat glands,
through their connections with the inter-neurilemmar,
spaces, and lymph channels.
In the wall of this posterior limb, of the neurenteric
canal, are laid down the structural elements of the budding
systemic nervous system, at first in most rudimentary form,
but, subsequently, by evolutionary stages, in increasingly
organised, and specialised, form, until the finished systemic
nervous system appears, in all its completeness of struc-
tural detail, and functional capability. The wall of this
THE SYSTEMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM 355
canal, therefore, undergoes a continuous thickening, and
structural organisation, by a process of deposition of
neuroglia, from the blood circulation, within the meshes of
its flbro-cellular basis, where, at last, there begin to appear
the rudimentary elements of nerve cell, and fibre, in an
increasing number, and variety, until the fabric of the
complete systemic nervous system is at last laid down,
amid the supporting, and evolving, structure, of the sym-
pathetic nervous system, part of which constitutes the
histological structural element of the neuroglia.
Evolved from, and founded on, the sympathetic system,
the systemic nervous system ultimately rules over, that
part of the human organism destined to determine its
thoughts, words, and actions, and to enable it to perform
the duties of a conscious, and thinking, being, in contra-
distinction to, and in supplement of, the merely organic,
or vegetative, rule of the sympathetic nervous system,
which is responsible for maintaining, the continuity of
life, and every organic, and nutritive, process, conducive
to it.
The completed systemic nervous system is composed of
brain, cord, and nerves, each of which is evolved from the
original embryonic structural elements, necessarily sym-
pathetic, in their earliest stages, but which, ultimately,
undergo a structural, and functional, differentiation, so
complete, as to constitute an entirely new, separate, and
voluntary, nervous system, suitable to the supra-organic
wants of an articulate, motile, and reasoning being. Need-
less to say that this systemic nervous system can be
observed in gradual process of evolution, in the various
stages of human embryonic, foetal, and post-natal develop-
ment, as it is to be seen in its various stages in systemically
innervated creatures, from the lowest to the highest ranges ;
and needless to say that each stage of the developmental
advancement, suffices to meet the systemic wants of that
stage. Needless, also, to say that the systemic nervous
system represents the highest form of organised matter, and
the only form, through which, the highest, and most subtle,
form of energy known to science, if it can be said to be
really known, can operate, by consciousness, and will,
thought, and ideation.
356 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
The systemic nervous system, moreover, represents a
nutrition effector, inasmuch, as by its cell processes, it
takes up from the neuroglial amorphous elements, the
pabulum for its own cell growth, and axonal extensions.
Along the fibro-axonal extensions of every nerve cell,
this neuronal nutritive pabulum is passed from the cell, by
regular circulation, or growth, to the various textures in
which the nerve terminals, afferent, and efferent, are
histologically distributed, and with which they become
histologically continuous. The nutritive process here
indicated reaches, therefore, by continuity, every texture
histologically related to the systemic nervous system,
along a neuro-vasculature, the lumen of which is patent
enough to allow circulation of axis-cylinder substance, and
medullary substance, respectively, materials, which traverse
their respective containing membranes, along every axonal
process, and which ultimately reach the periphery of the
systemic nervous system, and become structurally incor-
porated by the textures in which they terminate, or continue
farther circulating by continuous histological succession,
until these facilities become exhausted, when they are,
necessarily, finally arrested, or shed, or returned into the
blood stream. All these nutritive phenomena require for
their accomplishment, the existence of circulatory facilities,
and these facilities, we contend, are to be found in every
axonal fibre, with its histological continuations, where -
ever they lead to — these fibres and their continuations being
patent, and pervious, to the passage of the nutritive
materials taken up by the nerve cells, and their contained
nuclei, hence the skin, on the afferent side of the nervous
peripheral extensions, and the muscles, with their attached
tendons, intervening periosteum, and bones, on the efferent
side of the nervous peripheral extensions, respectively,
represent the structures to which the nutritive neuronal
material is conveyed, as nutritive pabulum, or excretional
material.
This nutritive role, which we have assigned to the
systemic nervous system, embraces a large proportion of
the nutritive work of the body, at least it embraces the
nutrition of the whole structures subserving the functional
work of the central, or systemic, nervous system, with the
THE SYSTEMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM 357
exception of the non-functional, or passive, structural
elements of the nerve structure proper, and the interstitial
elements of the structures, such as muscles, subservient to
the functional purposes of the systemic nervous system,
generally ; these latter being supplied, necessarily, directly
from the blood circulation, through the agency of the
sympathetic nervous system.
The systemic nervous system is entirely the product of
the sympathetic nervous system, according to these views,
and is elaborated and evolved, by it, in accordance with the
formative impulses resident in the embryonic organism,
whereby is realised the organic axiom, that " like produces
like," plus " progress." The sympathetic nervous system,
moreover, constitutes, in perpetuity, the living framework
by which it, the systemic nervous system, is supported, and
supplies the neuroglial pabulum on which it subsists, and
the neural nourishment, which it circulates along its axonal
fibral developments to become, in turn, the nutritive
pabulum of every texture in which they terminate primarily,
and, by histological continuity, secondarily.
The limits of the nutritional functions of the systemic
nervous system, therefore, are reached, at the epidermis of
the skin, in which the afferent nervature terminates, and
where, the nutritional role completed, the erstwhile nutri-
tive materials, are finally shed, and in the medullary con-
tents of the skeleton, to which the voluntary musculature
is attached, and into which the efferent nervature pours, by
histologically continuous channels, its residuum of neural
plasma, to be dealt with by the active retro-haemogenetic
elements so widely distributed amongst these contents.
The cerebro-spinal lymph, and also the nervine nutritive
plasma, being at all times liable to invasion by pathogenic
agencies, become, necessarily, the bearers into every region
supplied by the systemic nervature of chemical, physical,
bacterial, or other materies morbi^ where they leave them
to perform their pathological work, in accordance with the
laws of pathogenic evolution, when the result is determined,
by the operations of the vis medicatrix naturx^ plus, it may
be, the contributions of science, and art.
Who will deny that, along these lines, nature delivers a
large proportion of her pathogenic agencies, to accomplish
358 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
ends, the meaning of which is not yet intelligible to us, but
the effects of which continually cry out for, our sympa-
thetic consideration, and the use of our best endeavours, to
avert, to ameliorate, and to obliterate them, and their
baleful effects ?
EXTRACT XXXII. c.
ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE COMMON NERVOUS
SYSTEM— SYMPATHETIC AND SYSTEMIC.
The sympathetic nervous system, we contend, is syn-
chronous in origin, and in production, with the whole
living structures of all creatures not supplied with a
systemic nervous system ; that is, it is, or represents, the
sum of the vital principle, the organic units, and every-
thing that goes to make up the sum total of merely organic
life, be it vegetable, or animal — apart, therefore, in such
particular organism from the sympathetic nervous system,
nothing lives, and with its death, the life of that organism,
as an organic unit, ceases. The sympathetic nervous
system, thus, represents the vital principle, or life, and,
therefore, has vitalised, and continues to vitalise, every
living thing, since the " dawn of organic life " on the
globe, perpetuating life, or vitality, in continual succession,
along the lines of 'life ', throughout both the animal, and the
vegetable kingdoms, meting out the span of existence of
every living unit, and organism, and maintaining the
perennial continuity of the life forms, which have peopled,
do people, and will people it. Hence, apart from it, so
far as the organic life of this planet is concerned, nothing
lives, or can live, and to it all life is due, the everlastings
yet ever-varying, forms of life, evolving themselves
according to its intrinsic methods of progress, and pro-
cedure, and taking their appropriate position, as links in
the great chain of life, and individual organic destiny.
The germ, and sperm, protoplasm, or the primary
parental elements, vitalised with the sympathetic dynamic
360 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
principle, or vital force, approach, merge, and continue
the living characteristics of the parental sources from
which they were shed, transmitting, from one generation,
to another, in succession, the original life principle, to be
clothed in organic form, according to environment, and
preceding condition of life — "like producing like," and
like, plus modification, producing like, plus modification,
in endless succession, and increasing variety.
The sympathetic nervous system, so-called, therefore,
becomes synonymous with every non-systemically inner-
vated living structure, and is possessed of the dynamic
powers of life, or the vital qualities, constituting that
inscrutable entity, in its relationship to organic matter, and
the succession of life forms. By it, every organic atom,
or molecule, is brought into vital line, and continuity, in
the formation of every living cell, or in the building up of
every structure, and organ, of every living creature, for
the preservation in health of that creature, with its specific
characteristics, material, and dynamic, in order to maintain
the great " sequence of events," involved in the great
process of evolution.
These views necessitate a belief, in the parallelism, and
convertibility, of the terms, sympathetic nervous system,
and all varieties of cell, and fibre, structure, embraced
within the economy of an organic body, other than those
innervated by the systemic nervous system. From this,
the further belief is necessarily deducible, that all living
organic elements, or structures, are divisible into two
categories, according to their manner of innervation, and
that the many forms of structure known to anatomists,
and histologists, are but names for the various modifica-
tions of nervine development, as they become evolved by
increasing functional complexity, due to variation of en-
vironment, and continued elaboration of structure, and
function, to meet increasing organic wants, and dynamic
requirements.
Such a division of the textural elements of the most
complicated living organism, simplifies the conception of
its working, shows more clearly, and intelligibly, the inter-
dependence, and co-ordination, of its various parts, and
organs, and brings into relief the continuous " adaptation
THE COMMON NERVOUS SYSTEM 361
of means to ends," in the various arrangements of parts,
organs, and textures, which are to be met with along the
evolutionary way, in individual organisms, as well as, at the
various stages of racial development, and organic evolution,
generally.
Life, thus, becomes the function, and indisputable attri-
bute, of the sympathetic nervous system, all the non-
systemically innervated textures composing its material
basis, and all nervine activity, apart from the systemic,
being its dynamic possession.
It may, further, be contended that the systemic nervous
system itself is but an outgrowth from the sympathetic
nervous system, and a specialisation, for particular pur-
poses, in order to meet requirements which the generalised,
organic, and dynamic, sympathetic arrangements, are
unable, and unfitted, to meet, and, therefore, that the
machinery of life belongs absolutely to the sympathetic
nervous system, and is operated by that system, to satisfy
the entire organic wants of every living organism, vege-
table, and animal, invertebrate, and vertebrate, automatic
and reasoning.
Assorting the constituent textures of the body on the
principle, that there are but two divisions possibly demon-
strable, we are struck with the root observation, that the
evolution of the embryo, must have a determining effect
in laying the foundation of the divisional distinction ; and,
from this point of view, we are warranted in taking for
granted, that the original division of the ovum into
ectoderm, mesoderm, and hypoderm, is responsible for
the initiation of the developmental arrangements, whereby
the differentiation is effected. Thus, the mesoderm, and
hypoderm, may be regarded as the peculiar organic habitat
of the sympathetic nervous system, with its formative
machinery, material, and dynamic, while the ectoderm
may, in like manner, be regarded as the organic matrix,
from which the systemic nervous system is ultimately
evolved, by the formative, and organising, energy, of the
neighbouring sympathetic nervature, on the peculiar organic
elements of that embryonic ectodermal area.
The sympathetic nervous system is, thus, constituted
of, or claims as part of itself, the alimentary apparatus, the
362 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
blood circulatory machinery, the mechanism of nutrition
of the non-systemically innervated textures, and the
great lymph circulation, with the organs, and viscera, sub-
servient to the purposes of organic life, and the various
textures composing all of them. The systemic nervous
system, must, therefore, be composed of all parts, and
structures, unaccounted for in this list, and lays claim to
its own particular structures, composed of the brain,
spinal cord, and nerves, together with the muscles, tendons,
and, to some extent, the bones, with, more or less, of the
associated, and dovetailed, structures, uniting, and func-
tionally associating, the two systems, in their combined
work of maintaining the vital integrity of the organism,
and superintending its life-work. It goes without saying,
therefore, that all the above exists latent in the molecular
constitution of the fecundated ovum, and but requires, for
its evolution, the existence of certain conditions, supplied
from parental sources, " ready to hand/' — nothing, here,
being left to chance, or accident, but, on the contrary,
everything, to the minutest requirement, material, and
dynamic, being provided with unerring precision, as to
time of doing, and sequence of formative result, with the
consequence, that " like produces like," in accordance
with the organic axiom, deduced by embryological science,
from manifold observation, and supporting experimenta-
tion.
EXTRACT XXXIII. a.
ON THE DISTINCTNESS, AND RELATIONSHIPS, OF
THE TWO NERVOUS SYSTEMS IN STRUCTURE,
AND FUNCTION.
That the systemic nervous system, in whole, and in
part, is anatomically, and histologically, distinct from,
its surrounding, or, so-called, non-nervous, or sympa-
thetically innervated, related textures, is true, must be
accepted partially only, or to the extent that complete
insulation, or distinctness, characterises only the parietal
relationships of the completely developed textures,
nervous, and non-nervous, thus leaving the neuronal,
or nerve cell, dendritic processes, and the nerve terminal
processes, or extensions, or the proximal, and distal,
extremities, respectively, of the systemic nervous system,
to commingle with, and merge in, its non-nervous, or
sympathetically related, textures. Into this inner, and
non-related, or distinct, anatomical nerve area, we con-
tend, therefore, that, owing to this lateral insulation of
the axonal fibres, no substance can enter, save by these
proximal, or dendritic, processes, and that no substance
can be exuded, or excreted, save at axonal process inter-
ruptions, and by the distal, or peripheral, nerve terminals,
sensory, and motor; from which it follows that* all sub-
stances entering said systemic neuronal area must circulate,
or grow, from its proximal, to its distal extremity, and
be exuded, or shed, there, and that the nervous system,
generally is dual, in structure, and function, we also
assert — our reasons for making this assertion, however,
we shall attempt to present in some detail.
364 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
This doctrine of neural duality, is by no means new,
the division of the nervous system into systemic, and
sympathetic, having been acknowledged for a somewhat
long period by, anatomists, physiologists, and clinicians
alike, in their treatment of the great subject of the
nervous system. Anatomically regarded, the duality of
the nervous system seems more apparent, than real ;
nevertheless, a well-marked individuality characterises the
respective structures of the brain, cord, and nerves, of
its systemic division, and the ganglionic developments,
and connecting nervature, of its sympathetic division,
which becomes more and more apparent, when subjected
to physiological observation, and clinical experience, sup-
plemented by pathological research. By the light shed
from these various quarters, and focussed on discernment
of this individuality, and duality, of structure, and func-
tion, we perceive that the systemic nervous system is
related to the so-called non-nervous structures alone,
which are concerned with the daily recurring volitional,
and intellectual, necessities of life, and that the sympa-
thetic nervous system, so called, is related to the non-
nervous structures, and the passive, organic, or forma-
tive, functions, displayed in varying manner, and degree,
throughout the entire chain of living creatures, vegetable,
and animal, alike. The systemic nervous system displays
its activity rhythmically, or by " fits and starts," according
to, and synchronising mainly with, the earth's diurnal
motion, the intervals of rest being utilised to repair
waste, and renew energy, while the sympathetic displays
a constant, if faintly intermittent, functional activity, in
maintaining the continuity of organic molecular change,
and exchange — the former, or systemic, acting only during
periods of consciousness, while the latter, or sympathetic,
acts continuously from the beginning to the end of the
individual life, thus realising, in the economy of healthy
organic life, the harmonious working of a dual organism,
on the lines of the oft-quoted political parallel, or institu-
tion, an imperium in imperio.
Pathologically, the harmony, and success, of the
working of this dual nerve economy is liable to dis-
turbance in numberless ways, and to numberless degrees
THE TWO NERVOUS SYSTEMS 365
of complexity, thus affording a kaleidoscopic vista of
never-ending study to the exponents of clinical, and
physiological, medicine. Paralysis, motor, and sensory,
in all its degrees, illustrates the partial, or complete,
breakdown of the systemic nerve organism, while necrosis,
or gangrene, illustrates the breakdown of the sympathetic
nerve organism, both breakdowns owing their origin to
failure of their respective nerve structures, or of the supply
of the proper nutritional, or materio-dynamic, elements, on
which the continuity of life depends. Each occurs inde-
pendently of the other, and runs a course, determined
by its own structural, and functional, character, and
relationships.
This deduction, and formulation, of the principles of
duality, and individuality, of the nervous system, may be
said to warrant the further deduction that, besides con-
stituting the mainspring of vegetative, and animal, life,
and supplying the energy for the maintenance of volun-
tary, and intellectual, activity, from its universal combined
distribution, to the entire cell and fibre commonwealth
of the body; it may be, in actuality, regarded, as not
existing apart from, but, as actually constituting, that
organic commonwealth of cell and fibre, and as acting,
by, and through, it, in the performance of its manifold
functions, in the manner, as it were, both of producer,
and user, or as both citizen, and president, so to speak,
of that commonwealth, in one. Each division of the
nervous system exists, and acts, apart, or separately, in
the performance of its peculiar, or individual, functions,
but conjointly in certain communal nerve functions, such
as the alimentary, and respiratory.
The sympathetic nerve cells, grow by kariokinetic
division, and build up, through their growth, the whole,
so called, non-nervous textures of the body, by a process
of proliferation, which continues to make progress, or
increase, until the attainment of adult age, after which
it is reduced in proportions, but continues, to the degree,
commensurate with, the maintenance of tissue renewal,
and integrity; on the other hand, and in entire contrast
to the sympathetic nerve cells, which are synonymous
with the cells of the whole non-nervous structures of the
366 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
body, the systemic nerve cells are produced, once for all,
in numbers, exactly in accordance with the permanent
functional necessities of that system, and do not after-
wards increase in number, nor can be renewed if destroyed.
It may be said, in criticism of these statements, that the,
hard and fast lines of neuro-systemic structural evolu-
tion do not allow of the great functional advancement
achieved in the persons of individuals, of " light and
leading," who have been, more or less, in evidence, in
every age of the world's history, and whose systemic
nerve structures must have been superiorly developed,
in spite of the limitations of neuro-cellular, addition, and
renewal ; but in answer to this criticism, we would venture
the opinion, that the difficulty involved may be quite
satisfactorily met, by the ability, and power, of every
systemic nerve cell, to develop new processes, amcebally, or
by the strengthening, and lengthening, of those primarily
developed ; moreover, the effect of continuous, and syste-
matic, exercise, within the bounds of physiological safety,
is always productive of expansion of structure, and increase
of functional energy — so we would account for the seem-
ing contradictoriness of the above conditions, and state-
ment, of facts, by adducing these physiological axioms, as
quite sufficient to meet the difficulties.
The systemic nerve cells, and processes, are, necessarily,
the structural products, and functional formative work,
of the sympathetic nervature, and are dependent for their
combined existence, on the nutritive materials provided
by the activity of that nervature, from where its related
haemal vasculature, deposits the required pabulum, amid
the delicate neuroglial fibro-cellular textures of brain,
cord, and ganglia.
A systemic nerve cell, if once lost, is lost for ever,
while a sympathetic nerve cell, if lost, can be renewed, or
rather substituted, by prolifkation from a neighbouring
cell, so that the continuity of the bodily, so-called, non-
nervous textures can be perpetually secured, and the
integrity of the body, though paralysed, sustained, and
made habitable to, it may be, an unclouded, and active,
mind. In such a condition as that here described,
moreover, we see plainly, also, the dual nature, and
THE TWO NERVOUS SYSTEMS 367
functions, of even the systemic nervous system, in that
while the control over voluntary muscular activity is lost,
the work of the mind, or intellect, can be continued, it
may be, with pleasure, and interest.
For the life, and growth, of the body, during its pre-
natal existence, it is not necessary that there should be
an actively working systemic nervous system, because an
acephalic monster can be developed, and born, alive ; we,
however, would reserve, in such a case, the surmise, that
the presence of, it may, or rather must, be, some of the
basal, cerebral centres, and certainly all the cord, and
nerves, with the exception of some of the cephalic, are
essential to its evolution, and development — besides, it is
most likely that the acephalic factors produced their
effects, long after the inter-penetration of the foetal tex-
tures, by the systemic nerve elements, took place.
In the work of development, and organisation, of the
embryo, in the growth of the foetus, in its attainment of
the adult condition, and in the maintenance of what
constitutes the remainder of the individual life, we claim,
that the sympathetic nervature is everything, does every-
thing, and supplies everything, for its own wants, besides
producing for, and ministering to, every material want of
the systemic nervous system, and maintaining the material,
and functional, oneness, of the united organisms. There
are, thus, only two material entities constituting the
highest type of animal organism animated by, or with,
that immaterial ego, which is the proud, and distin-
guishing, prerogative, and attribute, of, at least, every
human creature.
We shall, therefore, express our strong desire that two
distinguishing, and expressive, terms, should be adopted,
and used, to express, in less cumbrous fashion, than we
have been able to do, with those which have now come
to our hand, to describe, so to speak, the dual dynamico-
materiality, of man.
EXTRACT XXXIII. b.
ON WHAT DISTINCTNESS OF THE SYSTEMIC NERVOUS
SYSTEM IMPLIES.
Distinctness of the systemic nervous system, within
its organic textural surroundings, implies, amongst other
things, only comparative, or practical, distinctness — for we
are not warranted in making the term absolute — of its
organised nervous texture, as well as of its lymph, or
peri-nervine fluid, and hence the removal of the latter,
from within the nervine precincts, without admixture
with the surrounding systemic, or haemal, lymph, is
uniformly effected, save when the efferent nervature
discharges its contents, fluid, and plastic, into the muscu-
lar areas, and substance, and thence into the systemic,
or haemal, lymph, circulation. This discharge, so long
as the nervine lymph is maintained in a state of purity,
chemical, and physiological, is accomplished, without
pathological incident, so soon, however, as it betrays a
departure from that condition, tell-tale sequences of
morbid events, begin to manifest themselves, in accord-
ance with the nature of the morbid interference, or diseased
process, which often culminate in the production of a
definite morbid condition, as it is known to the, diagnos-
tician, and nosologist. To the keen observer, therefore,
is thus afforded most valuable information, and circum-
stantial evidence, for his guidance, in the choice of
treatment, as well as, for the satisfaction of his scientific
amour propre.
The afferent, sensory, or cutaneous, peripheral nerva-
ture, possesses outlets, by which the nervine lymph, or
THE SYSTEMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM 369
fluid, is thrown out of the system, without the possibility
of its admixture, except in somewhat rare pathological
states, with the systemic, or haemal, lymph, or the blood
circulation : diseases, therefore, occurring within this
area, begin, and end, as purely nervine, and cutaneous
morbid entities, being initiated, as a rule, by sepsis of the
cerebro-spinal lymph, and closed by the excretion of the
resulting bacterial organisms, with their resulting toxins,
through the various cutaneous, and other nervine emunc-
tories, where their nature can be read, in characters
impressed on the implicated areas, by varying modes of
eruption, and outfall disposals.
On the contrary, the efferent, or motor, nervature,
terminating directly in the musculature of the body,
throughout its entire extent, exudes, or excretes, into
that musculature, the entire lymph, passed along its
peri-neural inter-spaces, or lymph paths, which, in morbid
conditions of that fluid, must necessitate the production
of specific morbid effects, in the form of morbid entities,
determined by the nature of the particular materies rnorbi,
besides the occurrence of morbid processes in succession,
throughout the entire " course of circulation," followed
by the lethal, and malign, viri, and "sequences of events,"
characterising much of the disease incident to this mixed
region, before elimination, or neutralisation, of the tainted
neural lymph can be effected, by haemal, or systemic,
agencies.
As types of two classes of disease, thus arising, we
would mention Herpes Zoster, and acute rheumatism —
the former, representing a disease beginning, and ter-
minating, with, and comprising the stages of invasion,
occupation, and abandonment, of a limited portion of the
neural, or cerebro-spinal, lymph, area, the latter repre-
senting, a more or less, wholesale invasion, and occupation,
of the motor areas, together with the extra-nervine areas,
to which it is related, and which lie between it and the
systemic lymph circulation, along which combined tracts of
circulation, morbid action may prevail, before the cessation
of its symptoms can ensue, or its evil results subside.
This much applies to the lymph disposal, only in its
aspect of distinctness, from the surrounding haemal lymph
2 A
37© BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
circulation, but does not embrace, that of the purely
nerve structural aspect, of the subject of neuronal distinct-
ness. This latter part of the subject may be described
as illustrating, a distinctness of neural texture, from the
surrounding non-neural related textures, of an even
greater degree, inasmuch as the neuronal elements, being
more plastic, or solid, than their surrounding lymph
elements, do not lend themselves to capillary circulation,
or disposal, except on certain definitely organised, or
structural, lines of arrangement, to which they alone are
subservient, and to which they, of purpose, lend them-
selves. Thus, the neuro-plasmic elements of the various
neurons, after circulation through the containing tubules
of the medullary, and axis cylinder, substances, respec-
tively, furnish organisable materials capable of further
organisation, to the various textures, in which they
happen to terminate, by a final process of axonal division,
or disintegration, and a cellular rearrangement of the,
divided, or cast-off, materials, from which follows, a corre-
sponding series of pathological manifestations, and morbid
entities.
EXTRACT XXXIII. c.
ON WHAT THE DISTINCTNESS, AND RELATIONSHIPS,
OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS LEAD TO.
We have already said that the systemic nervous system,
in whole, and in part, is anatomically, and histologically,
distinct, from its surrounding non-nervous related textures,
with the exception of where its dendritic, and terminal,
extensions, commingle with, its inlet, and outlet, sympa-
thetically innervated economy, in contradistinction to the
intermediate complete insulation of the entire axonal
fibres, of the systemic nervature. Into this inner, and
non-related, or distinct, anatomical nerve area, we contend,
therefore, that no substance can enter, save by the den-
dritic, or proximal processes, and that no substance can
be excreted, save by the peripheral, or distal nerve
terminals, sensory, and motor ; from which it must
follow, that all substance, entering and passing through,
this intermediate nervine area, must circulate, from its
proximal, to its distal extremity, and leave it there, and,
therefore, must consist of neuronal pabulum, or nerve
plasma only, and be obtained from the matrix of the
neuroglia, by the nerve cell dendrons, and circulated to
the peripheral extremities of the axons, by one continuous,
and uninterrupted, system of circulation, — a system of
circulation, which is par excellence^ the innermost, and
terminal, circulation, and which, in histologically ending,
ministers to the growth of the non-nervous structures,
with which it is distally related, on the completion of its
intra-nervine course, by exudation through the entirety of
the nerve terminals, into the matrix of the tissues, in
372 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
which they are developed, and whose innervation they
simultaneously effect. Thus, the substance of the outer
layers of the skin, with their local modifications, and
appendages, the epithelial, and endothelial, surfaces of
various membranes, the parenchyma of certain viscera,
and the sarcous elements of the muscular structures,
all benefit nutritionally, by the " cast-off," or excreted,
plasma, of the systemic nervous system.
In its beginnings, and its endings, therefore, the
systemic nervous system is structurally continuous with,
its non-nervous, or sympathetically innervated surround-
ings, in virtue of which it is directly nourished by them,
and in turn vitalises, and energises, them, at its distal
termination. In passage through, or conveyance along,
or amid, these structures, it, however, is completely
separated, and insulated, from its surroundings, by the
non-conducting, and insulating, textures, surrounding,
and enclosing, its component cells, and fibres. These
remarks apply to the systemic nervous system, although
they apply, to some extent, also, to the sympathetic
system, in its relationships, ganglionic, and neuro-fibral,
to what, may be called, the quasi-nervous textures, which
it innervates, and the maintenance of whose life is entirely
due to it, as well as the non-nervous elements of the
systemic nervous system, to which latter it is distributed
as the nervi nervorum, which circumstance indicates, that
the maintenance of the vitality of structure is essentially
due, to the action of the sympathetic nerve energy, and
plasma, and that this materio-dynamic combination suffices
to maintain the life of structure, from its origin in the
fecundated ovum, long antecedent to the development of
the systemic nervous system, until its somatic death,
which may be preceded by the virtual death, or functional
disability, of the systemic nervous system.
We may regard it, we think, therefore, as axiomatic, that
all merely vegetative, or animal, life, apart from the higher
functional life maintained by organic forms, is due to, and
maintained by, the action of sympathetic nerve energy on
the elements of organic protoplasm, in the processes of
living analysis and synthesis, which constitute the vital
role of living matter.
THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS 373
The dual nature, and functions, of the systemic nervous
system, we must, therefore, regard, as embodying principles
of the deepest physiological and psychological importance.
That a human being can live physiologically, and be dead
physiologically at the same time, is a matter of everyday
observation, and experience, in fact, it is the daily ex-
perience of all, during the condition known as sleep, and
the experience of many, in certain pathological states, and
is the outcome of the existence, in the sympathetico-
systemic nervous system, of a dual control, and combined
functional role, whereby the continuance of organic, and
conscious, life, is made possible, secure, and lasting. The
continuance of the dual control characterises the life of
the healthy individual, while its lapse, in whole, or in part,
indicates that disease, or disablement, exists, and unless
removed, that the death of the part, or the whole, will
inevitably follow. Moreover, we think that all living, or
organised, matter, whether vegetable, or animal, lives, in
consequence of being innervated, or vitalised, by what
is equivalent to sympathetic nerve energy, which, in
consequence, is equivalent to vital energy, or life. This
principle of life, regulating and inspiring, so to speak, deter-
mines, and directs, the arrangement of inorganic matter,
into the manifold forms of, living, or organic, matter,
animal, and vegetable, and dominates, and maintains, a
large proportion of the lower life forms of the globe,
joining with, and merging in, the higher, or systemic
nerve energy, in dominating, and maintaining, the highly
organised remainder.
Nerve energy has many characteristics in common with
electric, and other, forms of energy, but is endowed with
many, other, and higher, characteristics, in virtue of which
we are bound to recognise it as the highest form of
energy observable by science, and a type, to which all the
others point, and can be made to minister, — in fact, until
consciousness, and mental operations, are at last displayed
by it, and where it seems to enter on a process of still
higher evolution, with relationships, which lose themselves
in apparent actuality, and non-exhaustion, amid the realms
of imagination, the regions of the unrevealed, and the
absolutely mysterious ; but where, from its character, or
374 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
quality, of indestructibility, and increasing subtility of
mode of working, it may, nay must, still be able to
minister to, and satisfy, the inherent "longings," and
" clingings," of humanity to the indefinite future, or the
eternal. Here, however, we must resign the prosecution
of the enquiry, in this direction, into the hands of the
metaphysician, and those, whose peculiar function it is to
bring themselves, and others, into intimate, relationship,
and fellowship, with the " unseen, and eternal," with the
strong hope that science, and religion, will ultimately,
alike, benefit thereby, on the ground that all knowledge^
belonging to the human family, is one, and indivisible ',
emanating from the same sources, and leading in the
same directions, although, for the time being, these are
so seemingly divergent, contradictory \ deviating, and multiplex.
Life, moreover, regarded from the point of view of its
origin, and evolution, may scientifically be said, to be
never-ending, and we would, also, say that it is without
beginning, save with regard to its original creation, inas-
much, as, since that creation, it has continued without
break, or failure, each successive unit, of every successive
generation of living things, being united by life, to its
immediate predecessors, by the indestructible bonds of
living energy, operating on, and through, organised
material. Thus, also, life is perpetuated, in its higher
forms, by the projection into immediate contiguity, and
resultant continuity, of two vivified particles of organic
protoplasm, the vital amalgamation of which, constitutes
the commencement of another generation, and the starting
point of a new being. Towards this was contributed,
from the two parent sources, a quantity, or proportion,
of living matter^ the union of which, continues, in undying
continuity, the life of the parents, and the antecedent line
of pre-existent living forms, constituting our, human, and
ante-human, lineage — likewise, will the continuance of the
operation of the same laws, along the same organic lines,
ensure the, propagation, and continuance, of the human,
and other, species, ad infinitum, or until the required con-
ditions no longer exist.
Life, vital force, and sympathetic nerve energy, thus
viewed, are one. and the same, in nature, and attributes,
THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS 375
and suffice, for the conversion of the inorganic matter of
the earth's crust, into the living forms, with which we
are familiar, by a process of living inter-penetration, and
vivification, the organic results of which, are abundantly
observable, although yet entirely mysterious. The be-
ginning, the continuance, and the ending, of the process,
can be seen in endless variety, all around us, yet the most
acute observation, the most subtle experimentation, and
the most logical reasoning, of the physicist, and physio-
logist, have hitherto failed to do more, than maintain a
perennial interest, in the enthralling, and transcendental,
subject. Not physically, but physiologically, and psycho-
logically, regarded, however, we would seem " almost on
the brink " of projecting our inner vision across the gulf,
that separates the " seen, and temporal," from the "unseen,
and eternal"; this gulf, by the united light of science, the
telescopic powers of reason, the innate yearnings of the
human heart, and the " overglow " of revelation, lying
evident, in full perspective, as " one expanse " of grada-
tion, and rising perfection of evolutionary result, without
a break, or the suspicion of a solution of continuity, in its
entire proportions. Thus, the finite, and temporal, can
be seen to merge in, and to constitute a portion, for the
time being, of, the infinite, and eternal, whose horizons
recede and widen, in proportion as the range of vision,
and conception, increase, and the "adjustment of sight"
becomes more perfect, showing space, time, and eternity,
commingling, and inseparably blending, in one continuous
expanse of unbroken vision, pointing onwards, and out-
wards, to the arrival of that period, when the " former
shall be no more," or shall exist as mere evolutionary
incidents, in " the story of creation," and cosmic growth.
EXTRACT XXXIV. a.
ON THE DIVISION OF THE "NEURAL WORK" AS
EXEMPLIFIED IN "THE NERVOUS SYSTEM*' IN
ITS RESPECTIVE PARTS OF SYMPATHETIC AND
SYSTEMIC.
In a previous treatment of this subject, we endeavoured
to make plain the respective roles played by the two
systems. Further study of the subject, however, compels
us to amplify these remarks, in order to make plainer
our views on the subject, and to afford, to a fuller extent,
the materials necessary, for laying the foundation of a
more exact neuro-psychology, than we have yet been able
to formulate. We would, in beginning these supplemen-
tary statements, again bespeak, for the sympathetic division
of the nervous system, a larger place in the scientific field
of neurological phenomena, every day brought into re-
search prominence, by the army of investigators, now
spread over, we may say, the whole world, and a fuller
treatment, than it has yet obtained, so that its proper
value, to the science and art of medicine, may be ob-
tained, as we are firmly convinced that this can only be
attended by unmixed advantage, both to the progress of
abstract science, and the enlargement of our powers, of
healing and amelioration.
All vegetable life is due to a vital mechanism, actuated
by the equivalent of that neuro-dynamic agency, which
is entrusted with the administration of sympathetic nerve
energy, and the maintenance of lower animal life exclu-
sively, and which shares, with the systemic nervous
system, the maintenance of life, throughout the higher
animal world, and, therefore, in man, par excellence.
DIVISION OF "NEURAL WORK" 377
The exclusive, or independent, exercise of sympathetic
nerve energy, being, thus, sufficient to maintain in being
the larger half of the life of the globe — of the vegetable
entirely, and of the lower animal, a great proportion —
besides entering into the dual nervine control of the
higher animal forms of life.
In this alliance of sympathetic and systemic methods
of innervation, we see the greatest triumph of dynamic
combination, and control, that is to be found throughout
the whole range of biological physics, and recognise the
use, for combined biological purposes, of two of the most
marvellously constructed generators and distributors of
energy anywhere observable by man throughout nature.
The sympathetic nervous system, in man, is capable of,
and responsible for, acting alone, for, roughly speaking,
a third of his lifetime, and for the remaining two-thirds>
of uniting with the systemic nervous system, in maintain-
ing the continuance of the vital energies of his body
generally, and in aiding the systemic system in the dual
control of conscious life and work.
The work of the sympathetic system, is not, and
cannot be, interfered with, by the systemic, save by
violence, the alliance being so entirely and consistently
dependent, upon the principle of mutual respect, that no
wanton interference is permitted with the prerogatives of
either system, on the part of the other, unless when patho-
logical agencies find access and produce confusion.
What may be called the organic work of the living
body, is entirely within the administrative jurisdiction
of sympathetic nerve influence, and is accomplished, so
long as the conditions of life hold out unimpaired, and so
long as the material supplies are forthcoming, and the
preliminary, and terminal, somatic conditions, are main-
tained by the systemic nervature.
The latter, the systemic nervature, is responsible for
the choice and supply of the proper elements of food,
and their proper quantity, besides the supervising of the
economy of excretion, and the maintaining of a strict
watch on the disposal of the effete products, resulting
from the work of the former. The mutual working of
the two systems must, therefore, be secured in detail,
378 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
in order to the maintaining of the functional integrity,
and the consequent freedom from material clogging,
and implied organic friction, on which the possession of
health depends.
The basis of life, and health, therefore, must be sought
for, first, in that portion of the body, beholden to the
sympathetic nervous system for material, and dynamic,
support, and administration, and in this, when the con-
ditions required by that system are maintained, or restored,
by the aid of art, or nature, the status quo ante is
regained, and health again established. In doing so, we
find that the materials necessary for nutrition must pro-
perly, and regularly, be supplied, and that the economy
of nutrition, must be maintained aright, when it will
follow that life, and health, will be the inevitable conse-
quences, and the attainment of the usual physiological
balance, the necessary result.
We are warranted, we think, in asserting that disease
can never enter into the living economy, unless by the
faulty working of the two great biological factors, the
material and dynamic, and their two supervising nerva-
tures ; the primal necessity will, therefore, arise, whenever
a disease problem presents itself for consideration, for
obtaining a clear understanding, of where that disease
has commenced, and at which point in the sympathetic,
or systemic, nervatures, it has taken origin, in order, that
treatment should be adopted on scientific lines, and carried
out with a clinical consistency, flowing from a full know-
ledge of cause and effect, and a full appreciation of the
sequence of morbid phenomena, in order to secure the
re-establishment of the physiological regime, and the,
consequent, restoration of health.
The field of vital action is as wide as life itself, and
includes, contiguously, and contemporaneously, examples
of physiological, and pathological, methods of procedure ;
so that, throughout the whole extent of animated nature,
we see the advent, and departure, of living forms, in
every instant of time. We subject its problems to inves-
tigation, and are compelled to acknowledge that health,
disease, and death, are essential component parts of a great
whole ; and that what our very finite powers of observa-
DIVISION OF "NEURAL WORK" 379
tion, and abilities to affect beneficially their incidence, in
the everyday life, health, and death, of man, will enable
us to achieve, must be diligently sought after, or out, and
perfected, along these essential, determining, and limiting
lines. Roughly speaking, the life of man has not mate-
rially changed, in length or duration, since we have any
consistent, or definite, statements, on the subject, left us —
the " patriarchal " lives, reckonable on a lunar basis, being
no exception to the rule. It is doubtful, therefore, whether
even science, the most modern, will be able to satisfy
man to a much greater extent, than have the many futile
attempts of the searchers after the elixir vit<e, and
other " will o' the wisps," resulted in. While science
must have its limitations, as the greatest human factor,
in the great philanthropic work of prolonging the span,
and making more perfect the conditions, of the life,
vouchsafed to the race, it, nevertheless, behoves every
thinking man, to "leave not a stone unturned " to secure,
as far as possible, all that is attainable in this direction,
so that, at the least, the rate of progress of true civilisa-
tion, may be given fresh impetus, and increased volume,
of forward movement.
The life of man being the outcome of the dual
working of the two great nervous systems, in which the
vital energies reside, and of which life, so called, is
dynamically composed, in which they are generated, and
by which they are distributed, it behoves, that the reason,
and other mental faculties, dominating the systemic ner-
vous system, should be properly used, in conjunction
with the automatically acting, sympathetically inspired
nervous system, in order that the vital output should
reach its highest possible limit. Reason, instinct, and the
so-called innate directing faculties, of the living human
organism, must be trained to combined action, and must
be controlled, on lines consistent with the maintenance
of life at its highest level of attainment, in order that the
greatest perfection of working, and the highest condition
of health, should result.
Dual control may, thus, result in the highest possible
form of corporeal, material, and functional, health, and
the accomplishment of the greatest amount of work, with
380 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the least expenditure of energy, and the highest attain-
ment of speed, consistent with safety to the machine, and
the realisation of the intention of its existence.
The two nervous systems are arranged, within the
body, in such a way, as to work in the manner here
attempted to be described, either singly, or dually, as
required, and are surrounded, on all sides, by the so-called
non-nervous textures of the body, through which they
operate, in performing their various functions, and which,
in turn, they energise, and keep in material and dynamic,
union and cohesion, for the accomplishment of individual,
and communal organic ends and purposes, and organismal
necessities.
For these high purposes, the two systems, are evolved
on two essentially different lines, the one, the sympathetic,
beginning with the dawn of embryonic life, and perpetu-
ated from pre-existent, or parent, sources, and the other,
the systemic following, when the conditions of life of the
embryo transcend the powers of its more rudimentary
being, and working, and call for a still further evolution
of the conditions of life, if the organism is to continue to
be further evolved, and its organic destiny attained.
The stages of evolution, or developmental progress,
thus exemplified by the embryo, and ranging from the
unicellular, to the multicellular, group themselves along
the lines of cell proliferation, and cell organisation, for
growing, and increasing, functional purposes, tissue for-
mation, and visceral development, for special purposes,
the growth of limbs, and consciously exercised motive
power. The systemic system, it is thus seen, comes on
the developmental scene, when the sympathetic has laid
the foundation for, and used up much of its evolutionary
energy, and material, in the formation of an incipient
ultra-sympathetic nervous system, destined to blossom
into the great psychological instrument of brain, cord,
and nerves, through which, dead matter can be made the
instrument of, consciousness, intelligence, and morality,
to raise man to a height of destiny not yet attained by
his lower relations, in the scale of life, and being.
Inside the so-called non-nervous structures of the body,
insulated, and encased, by many a layer of nf n-conducting
DIVISION OF "NEURAL WORK" 381
tissue, surrounded by a fluid medium, in which it floats,
safe from shock, and friction, the nervous system, in its
dual formation, and unal functional role, vitalises, ener-
gises, and controls, the living and working of the body,
deputing the various departments of that work, to appro-
priate portions of that system, in combination with
appropriate portions of its non-nervous structures, and
controlling the whole, for the communal purposes of the
entire organism.
While the insulation, and bufferage, provided by the
non-nervous elements, in this great pan-neuro-systemic
organisation, is of the most complete, and effective,
character, it may be further claimed for it that it pro-
vides, simultaneously, a neuro-distributive medium equally
omnipresent, and effective, in the many nervine procedures
of reception and transmission, on the one hand, and of
resolution, and transmission, on the other, or, in other
words, of the receipt of sensory, and the transmission of
motor, nerve impulses.
Nerve energy, here, may, in a sense, be regarded as,
the product of nervine secretory activity, and due to the
physiological receipt, independent production, and storage,
within the intra-cellular bodies, known as nucleoli, one of
whose functions, or, it may be, whose sole function, is,
the manipulation, so to speak, of nerve energy. This
most transcendental subject, however, we have elsewhere
dealt with — it seems, therefore, unnecessary to deal further
with it here, beyond saying, that we have not, so far, had
reason to change our opinions thereon.
Nerve energy cannot be produced, received, stored,
or distributed, by any other structure, than the nervous,
and it cannot be, by the nervous structure, unless that
structure be insulated and protected by meninges, and
their equivalent continuations, neither can it be, unless
these meninges, and their continuations, are, in turn,
surrounded by a layer, or layers, of cerebro-spinal fluid,
the presence of the latter, being essential for the passage
of nerve energy, both from without inwards, in answer to
stimuli, and from within outwards, as impulse, in the
most special, and specific, physiological manner. That
each division, of the great nervous system, can produce,
382 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
receive, store, and distribute, its own specific nerve energy,
there cannot be the slightest doubt, as daily, physiological,
and clinical, experience, and observation, abundantly prove ;
and that there is a balanced reciprocity in all the daily, and
hourly working, of the two systems, there is, equally,
not the slightest doubt ; it is, therefore, essential, at all
times, to bear this in mind, and to be prepared to recog-
nise its existence, and act in accordance with, its require-
ments, whenever called upon — as, we may be every day,
in such ailments as, the now fashionable one, of
neurasthenia.
In this disease, if we are really entitled to call it a
disease, the exhaustion of nerve energy may be dual,
that is, it may involve the generating powers of both
systems, in which case appeals must be made to both,
and the requisite restorative means applied to each, or
both ; in a word, the proper nutrition of both systems
must be arrived at, the dormant powers of their associated
musculatures roused, and their mobile abilities renewed,
all which, bespeaks the adoption of physiologically indi-
cated means, as the rational, and scientific, way, to clear
up the situation ; proper food, successful digestion, free
circulation, and exact assimilation, must be supplied, and
sought after, by consulting the sympathetic nervous
system ; while freedom from care and worry, judicious
exercise of both musculatures, fresh air, and all hygienic
adjuncts, must be supplied, to meet the wants of the
systemic nervature and musculature ; and the continuance,
and regulation, of these, according to the necessities of
the individual case, must be persevered in, in order to
the maintenance of health when re-established; all which,
looks most simple, while, at the same time, it requires the
use of the highest powers of discrimination and tact on
the part of the physician. Neurasthenia, being essentially
a condition of health resulting from modern forms of
civilisation, and requiring for its treatment the prescrip-
tion, more especially, of rational preventive measures,
with the adoption of the above-mentioned curative
agencies, and manner of life, so soon as it can be said
to have begun, it behoves the observant physician, as
well as the relatives of its subject, to be on the watch,
DIVISION OF « NEURAL WORK" 383
lest it be allowed to progress beyond the bounds of cure,
or even relief.
That part of the organism, controlled by the sympa-
thetic nervature, will generally require the first attention,
and, it may be, that that attention will be all that is
required to obviate the involvement of the systemically
innervated structures, and the more pronounced evolution
of the neurasthenic phenomena.
The physiological relationships of the two neuro-
musculatures are based, to a very large extent, on the
principle of reciprocity, the stock of nerve energy,
possessed by the entire combined nervatures, being
common and available for the work of either, or both,
and, thus can be drawn upon by either, or both, so long
as the histological continuity of the combined sympathetico-
systemic nerve media subsist ; any perversion of this
principle of reciprocity may, therefore, lead to most
serious inco-ordination, and neuro-muscular confusion, as
well as intellectual disturbance, when connected with the
highest cerebral " centres." Nutrition, the great central
function of the sympathetic nervature, is essential for every
detail of vital activity, both of its own structures, and
those of the systemic nervature ; it, therefore, is essential
for the neuro-muscular activities of the whole body, and
the maintenance of nerve energy, which may be considered,
in most essential respects, as equivalent to life itself.
It may be assumed, as a principle, that every conscious
feeling, physiological and pathological, is realised by the
systemic nervature alone, and that, when such conscious
feeling emanates primarily from the sympathetic nerva-
ture, it does not become realisable by the systemic
sensory nervature, until it has passed outside of the
sympathetic nervature, the latter system, on no occasion,
appealing to the systemic sensorium, until it passes its
impulses into the related ganglia, and their systemic
neural communications, the exact histological appreciation
of which constitutes a clinical asset, of the greatest value,
in both diagnosis and treatment. Diseases of the viscera,
especially, afford examples of the truth of these remarks,
and it cannot be gainsaid that, when the structures, and
functional connections, of the two nervatures, are better
384 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
understood, and the principle of sympathetico-systemic
nervine reciprocity, more fully appreciated, that a long
step forward in scientific medicine, will have been taken,
and a way opened up to cope with the complicated
processes of disease, by which our powers for good will
be largely increased.
We may regard it as axiomatic, that every medical
appeal must be made to the nervous system, and that
the appeal must be made to that system, in both its
unal, and dual, capacities, in order that it should not
miss being successful. It must, also, be at all times
remembered, that the key to every vital position, structural
and functional, is to be found within the nervous system,
in either its material, or dynamic, condition, or both, and
that the dual control of all nervine action, must ever be
present in the mind, in seeking a practical solution of any
problem, involving the nervous system — and, it may be,
asked, pertinently, what disease does not involve the
nervous system, directly, or indirectly?
The distinction, and the reciprocal relationships, of the
two nervous systems, suggest the conviction, that a most
profound biological deduction, is warranted, therefore, viz.
that there are two organisms within the human personality
innervated by the sympathetic, and systemic, nervatures,
respectively, and that man is made up of a material, and
dynamic, being, living, and acting, consciously, and un-
consciously, by virtue of this dual innervation, which is
resolvable into its separate parts, by influences, inimical
to the continuance of the dual existence, or life.
Death, therefore, constitutes the natural termination to
this dual existence, releasing the dynamic, from the
material, being, and allowing their entering into new
combinations, to continue the cycle of change, and
evolution, in endless progression, and absolute order,
along the lines of continuity of force, and matter,
respectively. Death in reality, therefore, can only be
considered, as the biological continuance of, the dynamic
or vital, principle, in combination with new evolutionary
factors, of a metaphysical order, and the physical return,
of the material components of the organism to the matrix,
whence they were originally derived.
DIVISION OF "NEURAL WORK" 385
Science, and revelation, here, mutually bear witness to
the existence of the same great truth, viz. that life is
continuous, or immortal, and that, therefore, the present
life is but a prelude to, and a preparation for, a life,
whose end is dynamically impossible and unthinkable,
and whose evolution will continue " throughout the
endless ages of eternity." We, therefore, hope, that the
exponents of the great truths, both of science, and
revelation, will become, more and more, impressed with
the cogency, and reasonableness, of this conclusion, and
will rise to a true appreciation of the sublime helpfulness
obtainable from it, when regarded from the respective,
standpoints of lay and clerical teachings. A bond of
union, between these two great schools of thought, and
action, will thus be gained, whereby a feeling of mutual
respect will be created, and joint action made possible,
in the regions, of human necessity, and divine charity.
If the law or process of evolution be applicable to the
proper understanding of physical and biological progress,
then, without unduly burdening it or straining it, we feel
that applying it to the apprehension of thg, " progress of
things " intellectual and spiritual, we are warranted in the
belief, that we are likely to increase our realisation, and
extend the horizon of our inner vision, " of things not
seen and eternal," and thus of being able, beginning with
things provable by the senses and the reason, to undertake
the transcendental task of penetrating the far outside spaces
of the universe, and the far distant past and future of
time, so as, in some infinitesimal degree, to make out the
why and wherefore of our existence, and to locate to some
extent our whereabouts, and the character of the efforts
required to place ourselves inside the area intended for our
reception, continued growth, and expansion.
Spiritualism, in the highest sense of the word, and
materialism, viewed from such a standpoint, cease to be
antagonistic, and merge, as fragments of the same great
body of revealed and scientific fact, into the " weft and
woof" of universal truth, in the inseparable bonds of
indivisible continuity.
In the growth, culmination, decay, and dissolution of
the human body, we witness the union and disunion of a
2 B
386 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
dynamic, or spiritual, entity, with a material organism,
which it animates and keeps alive for a brief period, in
virtue of the play of sympathetic innervation alone in its
earliest stages, but ultimately, in conjunction with systemic
innervation, when the attributes of intelligence and moral
sense become superadded and evolved into more or less
perfection of development, under which all the best
attributes of humanity appear and fructify, when the
inevitable dissolution of the bonds between substance and
energy takes place, and new resolutions become effected,
whereby the reign of evolutionary law and progress are
maintained, and everlasting existence secured. Every
human body thus contains two beings, separable only
by death, and each possessing an individuality, the one
terminable in its character and individuality by death, and
the other continuous in its individuality, unitable to other
dynamic media, and capable of development ad infinitum^
aut vitam aut culpam, and, it may be, retrogression and
reversion.
The material body is innervated and maintained mainly
by the sympathetic nervous system. We say mainly,
because the innervation is dual, and the immaterial, or
dynamic, portion is innervated by the systemic nervous
system, that is, so far as a dynamic body can be said to be
innervated, and when innervation ceases, new affinities
must determine the character of the future existence of
the two portions, so soon as their dissolution becomes
effected.
EXTRACT XXXIV. b.
ON THE COMBINATION OF SYMPATHETIC AND
SYSTEMIC MUSCULAR INNERVATION.
That the sympathetic nervous system is possessed besides
a musculature of what is equivalent to one, i.e. a con-
tractile mechanism, whereby it can effect the shortening
and lengthening, or regulation, of certain organic textures,
is a belief which, more and more, grows in strength upon
us as we succeed in differentiating it in structure and
function from the proper musculo-nervous system. Thus,
the contractile mechanism, by which the shrinkage or con-
traction and relaxation of the perineo-scrotal textures is
effected, seems to be repeated, wherever the phenomena
of rapid cutaneous shortening and lengthening have to be
accomplished, as for instance in the orbits, without the
presence or aid of muscular fibre, and where necessarily a
pseudo-muscular fibre is innervated by the sympathetic
nervature ; and that this belief is well founded we are now
fully convinced, and we would observe that such contractile
movements are apparent when the systemic nervous system
is entirely detached and insulated from the sympathetic
nervous system, as in sleep and in some forms of paralysis,
when vaso-motor phenomena generally, and cutaneous
transpiration and perspiration phenomena are determined
and regulated necessarily by the sympathetic nervature,
through the contractile agencies resident in the structures
concerned ; but whether the principle of a dual control
could be admitted here it is premature to say, further than
that it is highly probable. The cutaneous musculature,
apart from such sub-cutaneous muscular developments
388 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
as the platysma myoides, we think, can only be innervated
by the sympathetic, inasmuch as we find it quite impossible
for instance, voluntarily to produce the conditions known
as " cutis anserina" or the feeling of " streams of cold
water running down the back," or that weird feeling of
the " hair standing on end," or the wave-like feeling or
formication engendered by the action of a cold current
or draught of air. If these statements be well founded, as
we think they are, it will at once become apparent that a
very large functional neuro-muscular role belongs to the
sympathetic nervous system — in fact, it would appear that
virtually the whole functions of organic life, and the
greater part of those of reproduction, are under the entire
control of the sympathetic system, and are only slightly
affected by voluntary interference, or systemic nerve
influence, hence the maintenance of the continuity of the
entire vital processes during unconsciousness or sleep.
Thus, the processes of alimentation, digestion, absorption,
circulation, respiration, assimilation, metabolism, secretion,
and excretion, can be, and are effected, without voluntary
interference or control, while the processes involved in
ovulation and embryonic development are entirely due to
sympathetic innervation and vitalisation, and quite un-
affected, except it may be in that remarkable, if somewhat
doubtful, occurrence of " maternal impressions," by in-
fluences emanating from the maternal and passing to the
offspring's systemic nervature.
Tissues composed of "elastic fibres," so called, the
vaso-motor musculature of vessels, blood, and lymphatic
and ducts, the muscular coat of the alimentary canal, and
unstriped muscular structures generally, all respond to
the innervating influence of the sympathetic system, and
are entirely amenable to its controlling power ; a provision
for a dually innervated and controlled organism, the
wisdom of which is only too apparent, and the physio-
logical purposes of which are rewarded by a rigorous
adhesion to the " plans of nature," for the uninterrupted
accomplishment of growth and nutrition, and vital opera-
tions generally. The sympathetic nervous system may,
therefore, be regarded as responsible for the guidance of
the performance of all neuro-muscular phenomena, save
MUSCULAR INNERVATION 389
those of voluntary origin and of purely neural phenomena,
save those of intellect and will, or cerebration proper ; its
enormous physiological importance thus can scarcely be
overestimated, and the necessity for its more exhaustive
study becomes more and more clamant. The histological
connections of the two nervous systems, the systemic and
the sympathetic, are well, if not completely, known, the
" rami communicantes" of the systemic penetrating into
every section of the sympathetic, and effecting a more or
less complete amalgamation of the two — whether, however,
these "rami communicantes" contain motor and sensory
elements in equal or varying proportions, has not yet
been determined. We are, therefore, at liberty to infer that
both elements enter and leave the histological combination
in physiologically balanced ratio, and that the exchange of
systemic and sympathetic nerve energy respectively is
maintained, in virtue of this histological arrangement, at
neutral and non-explosive rate. The normal working of
the combination is characterised by an almost complete
absence of consciousness, on the part of the cerebro-spinal
centres, of the various steps and stages of that work, the
whole being effected without " let or hindrance," or
apparent friction, amongst the agents supervising it, the
sympathetic neuro-musculature being alone sufficient to
meet all emergencies. When, however, any element of
discord or friction enters into the working of these dual
elements, a consciousness of its presence is at once the
result, through the sensory fibres of the " rami communi-
cantes" which consciousness so rouses the vis medicatrix
nature, that she, if it be slight and easily removable,
adopts the requisite means for its removal, or, if not,
"calls aloud" to the "sleeping partner" for assistance,
through intensification of the sensory disturbance and
unmistakable pains.
EXTRACT XXXIV. c.
ON THE PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN THE
SYMPATHETIC AND SYSTEMIC NERVOUS SYSTEMS.
We have already endeavoured to make clear that the
nervous system of man is dual, in anatomical structure,
in functional control of the working of the physiological
life of his organs and textures, and in the determination
of the destiny of his component parts, physical and meta-
physical, material and immaterial.
These nervous systems are evolved in succession, the
sympathetic first and the systemic second, from the uni-
cellular organism called the fecundated ovum, the first, or
sympathetic, being, in turn, instrumental in evolving the
second, or systemic. They each, we have seen, while
retaining their respective nervine individualities, act and
react on each other, and perform their individual functions
in the economy of the body generally, while they unite in
the performance of the " thousand and one " common
functions, in the bonds of a common origin, and to meet
the necessities of a common organism, for common pur-
poses, to the end that one great common organic object
may be attained.
This principle of dual control, within the physiological
working of the human organism, necessitates the existence
of a " treaty of reciprocity," so to speak, between the two
systems, determines the limits of individual freedom of
working and administration within the limits of the
common organism, and prescribes the occasions on which
joint action is necessary to accomplish common ends.
The importance of such a provision in the dual working
THE PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY 391
of such a complex organism as the human body, it is
impossible to overestimate, inasmuch as at every patho-
logical " turn of events " we are brought face to face with
a violation of that treaty, and cannot see the restoration
of physiological order, until we and the vis medicatrix
nature have succeeded in restoring the status quo ante.
To illustrate the truth of these remarks, let us take one
conspicuous example, which may be accepted as typical,
viz. the great function of nutrition. In this the systemic
nervous system, by virtue of its possession of the senses
of taste, smell, sight, and touch, etc., and the faculty of
reason, determines what is best for the nutrition of the
body which it innervates, and supplies the requisite — not
unfortunately without mistakes — materials, to the waiting
and ready sympathetically innervated musculature of the
post-pharynx, which at once, and without option, trans-
mits them to the all but entire control of its associated
sympathetically innervated, digestive, assimilative, and
eliminatory textures and organs, for distributive disposal
and final elimination. If this can be accomplished without
" let or hindrance," the systemic system is rewarded for
its implicit trust in its co-treaty power, and co-partner by
the nutritive and eliminatory work involved being done
to its entire satisfaction and abiding comfort; if, however,
as is always possible in the best-regulated labour compacts,
elements of friction and disturbance have been unfortun-
ately allowed to enter, a period of discomfort and mutual
distrust and recrimination between the two systems ensues,
until the vis medicatrix succeeds in clearing the total dual
commonwealth of every cause of discomposure, and in
restoring its lost physiological order. It is nothing less
than astonishing to observe with what long-suffering, and
infinite disposition to meet its obligations, the sympathetic
system labours, and with what success it accomplishes its
unaided, and often thwarted, labours, when called upon to
prepare from the most unpromising and heterogeneous
materials the plasmic elements of nutrition, and to dis-
tribute them unerringly to the expectant tissues and
organs of the body. It is, moreover, not less astonishing
to observe with what precision and executionary ability
it seizes, in exchange for its new tissue elements, the
392 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
worn-out and effete materials which have " borne the brunt "
of organic tear and wear, and which now must be removed,
to prevent auto-toxis, and " make way " for a new mole-
cular distribution of nutritive plasma. All which is
accomplished by the unaided efforts of organic textures
innervated by the sympathetic system, and, very slightly
only, supplemented by the systemic, and mainly at the
points of exit of the excretionary organs only — or where
the conjoint action of the two systems is necessary for
the orderly and unopposed operation of the eliminatory
machinery, and the communal recognition of mutual
obligation. In the mutual discharge of the communal
functions of the two nervatures, a somewhat elaborate set
of mutually understood signs and warnings are constantly
in use by them, a true knowledge of which constitutes a
not unimportant part of human education, and power to
meet the functional emergencies and ever-recurrent neces-
sities of everyday life, and which may " make or mar," to
a considerable extent, the sum of human happiness, as
well as of bodily comfort and health.
The clinical bearings of this latter fact, that the two
nervatures maintain their frequent union of function, by
means of mutually understood signs, and also become
a physiological instrument, which, rightly used, may be
fraught with great therapeutic power, in the hands of
the observant and resourceful physician, when engaged
in the routine of his daily work, and in estimating the
nature, and strength, of the pathological factors to
which he is opposed, are obvious.
As the systemic nervous system somewhat suddenly,
and precipitately, resigns its burden to the care of its
nervine colleague, the sympathetic, at the entrance of
the alimentary canal, so does the sympathetic resign its
burden, to be finally disposed of by its reasoning and
alert partner, the systemic, and, if there should be any
failure to understand, or appreciate, the language of the
signs, by the latter, or any inability to meet the obli-
gations, then the blame must be apportioned to the latter,
and the way to prevent any recurrence of such a con-
tingency must be sought for in the rectification of its
intrinsic faults, by the application of appropriate remedies.
THE PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY 393
The resignation of systemic nervine control of functional
activity, which, again, characterises the onset of sleep, is
so imperceptible as to have absolutely baffled every
attempt of consciousness to appreciate it, the sway of
the sympathetic nervous system being substituted, for
that of the systemic, so silently, so to speak, and com-
pletely, as not to arrest the already slumbering attention.
Moreover, the appreciation of the subjective feelings,
or " calls of nature," of hunger and thirst, by the
systemic nervous system, is of such constant and
unvarying occurrence, as to give rise to nothing more
than a routine feeling of attention, which is satisfied, or
answered, when all that is necessary to appease them has
been supplied to the oro-gastric organs.
EXTRACT XXXV.
ON NERVINE SECRETION AND EXCRETION.
The brain, cord, and ganglia may be compared with, and
described as, a Great Glandular Organ. It has been said
that " the brain secretes," that " it secretes thought and
nerve force," and in a functional sense this may be
regarded as true. In quite another sense, however, we
wish, for purposes of comparison, merely to describe
shortly how it may be compared with a glandular organ,
in order to make more clear and apprehensible some
of the heterodox views, which are so freely advanced by
us in these pages.
That portion of the central systemic nervous structures
composed of brain, cord, and ganglia, has conveyed to,
and distributed without and within it, a very large blood
supply, the outer portion of the vasculature of which is
developed within the texture known as the pia mater,
while the inner, or proper, blood plasma distributing
vasculature is developed in the neuroglial matrix of
these central neuro-genetic masses. The former vascu-
lature, the outer, or true pia mater, with its extensions,
or inflections, known as the choroid plexuses, secretes
or exudes the fluid known by the name of the cerebro-
spinal lymph, the latter, or inner, exudes, or extravasates,
the substance known as the neuroglia, both parts of this
great circulation thus performing functions equivalent
to the blood circulations of organs known as true glands
— the secretion of the outer pia mater being fluid, that of
the neuroglial vasculature viscous. Except in so-called
ductless glands, every secretion becomes an excretion,
NERVINE SECRETION 395
and has provided for its removal, or elimination, an
excretory duct or ducts ; therefore, in instituting this
comparison we have not been unmindful of the require-
ments of the situation in this direction, inasmuch as no
glandular organ within the human organism can compare
with it in the extent and variety of its excretory facilities.
Thus, we claim that special, as well as general, facilities,
are provided for these excretory purposes almost every-
where around the periphery of the entire systemic nervous
system, as well as by every nerve terminal within the
internal structures of the body, so that this fluid can
never — everything being physiologically correct and
sound — become a source of danger from over-pressure,
or fail to afford relief when pressure becomes dangerous,
from outside or inside, hydrostatic or hydro-dynamic,
circumstances. These excretionary provisions consist —
we may again say to ensure familiarity with the subject
— of the following amongst others, viz. the olfactory
mucosa, the tonsillo-glosso-pharyngeal mucosa, and the
coccygeal gland, excretory mechanisms, along with the
peripheral nerve terminal developments, and sweat
glands, as well as the motor nerve and plates, and
sarcolemmar sheaths, with their tendonous, periosteal,
synovial, and osseous continuations and connected sys-
temic lymphatics.
The quantity of this fluid, for the time being, must
necessarily depend on the exigencies of the intra-systemic
nervine pressure, being regulated by the vaso-motor
agencies of the pial vasculature, so that a state of
hydrostatic equipoise can be maintained within, without,
and throughout, the entire nerve developments of the
body, by a continuity of circulatory facilities, and excre-
tory agencies, of an absolutely complete, and effective,
character. Inside this regulated, soft, and fluid, barricade,
safe from the concussion and friction of the outer world,
the great nerve organism is "at liberty," and can, therefore,
perform its varied and manifold secretory, and other
functions, tranquilly, and rhythmically, in accordance with
physiological, and psychological, law and order.
The comparison would not be complete were we to
omit that great nervine secretion which takes place in
396 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the neuroglial matrix, where every nerve cell, composing
the systemic nerve cell commonwealth, secretes its
nutritive plasma, and excretes it by growth along its
axonal fibre, to supply, on the one hand, the elements
of the cuticular investment of the body, and, on the
other, the nutritive pabulum of the sarcous discs of its
voluntary musculature. These two secretions become
ultimately, by a continuity of intra-nervine circulatory
disposal, in their respective intra-nervine functional roles,
a common but dual excretion, fluid or plastic, according
to its manners and methods of final disposal, and is
eliminated like other effete, or dead, products.
EXTRACT XXXVI.
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOME OF THE ORGANS
OF SENSE, AND THE MANNER OF ARRANGEMENT
AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE CEREBRAL AND SPINAL
MENINGES AT THE OPENINGS OF EXIT OF THE
CEREBRO-SPINAL CAVITY.
It may now, we are convinced, be accepted as true that
the systemic nervous system is enclosed by the meninges,
or their equivalents, throughout its entire extent, both
within and without the cerebro-spinal cavity, and that the
nervous system, and its meningeal, or equivalent containing
textures, are exactly conterminous, and parallel, in extent,
and distribution. That being so, we may take it that the
developing nerve textures are provided with, or push
before them, their meningeal, or peripheral, coverings, to
the limit of their extensions, where they remain a permanent
means of protection, support, and inhibition. Accordingly,
therefore, to the nature of the particular nerve, whether it
be special, or general, we find a particular arrangement, and
adaptation, of the meninges, in their peripheral develop-
ment, to suit its particular circumstances and function.
Thus, the spinal nerves, and the cephalic nerves, with the
exceptions of the second, and first, pairs, in passing out of
the cerebro-spinal cavity simply push before them, on their
exit from it, an extension, or projection, of the various
meningeal folds with which they are immediately sur-
rounded, and carry them to their respective terminations
in unbroken continuity, and distinctiveness of texture, as
well as, with their inter-spaces, patent, and capable of circu-
lating their contained cerebro-spinal fluid or lymph. The
398 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
second and first pairs of cephalic nerves, being exceptions
from this manner of meningeal accompaniment, require a
few words of special reference. Instead of beginning their
course of development directly from the cerebral periphery,
they are projected as proper cerebral textures, or processes,
for a considerable distance along the base of the brain,
before the nerves proper, to which these textures, or
processes, lead, become evolved, and organised. In the
early neuro-vesicular stage of embryonic growth, these two
pairs of special sense nerves originate, as projections, or
swellings, of the nascent fore-brain, and surround them-
selves with continuations of the nascent meninges, as they
Fig. 129.— Longitudinal section through the head of an embryo
of four weeks. ^» (From Kolliker.)
z>, anterior encephalic vesicle, cerebral portion ; z, interbrain ; ;«, midbrain ; /i, cere-
bellum ; n, medulla oblongata ; no and a, optic vesicle ; o, auditory depression ;
/, centre of basi-cranial flexure ; t', lateral and hinder parts of tentorium ; p, the
fold of epiblast which forms the hypophysis cerebri.
leave the developing cranial cavity, and so dispose of these
meningeal textures that they become part and parcel of the
proper sense organs ; almost the same may be said of the
auditory division of the fifth pair.
The vital process of developmental adaptation of these
meningeal textures to the requirements of sense organs, is
one of the transcendental examples of nature's methods of
turning the common into the uncommon, and of utilising
the ordinary, and immediately available, formative materials,
for the accomplishment, or production, of extraordinary
organic purposes and ends. (On this subject we claim that
another Bridgewater Treatise might be witten, and occasion
for literary inspiration, and graphic delineation, amply pro-
vided for, in their highest flights.)
The optic vesicular (Fig. 129) enlargements of the
THE ORGANS OF SENSE 399
fore-brain, in their early development and evolution, enwrap
themselves in their meningeal coverings, and project them-
selves, through interstices in the enclosing cephalic wall,
into the forming orbital recesses, where they blossom into
the future eyes stage by stage, until they culminate in the
formation of the most wonderful sense organs known to
biological science, in its entire survey of animated nature.
In the process of transformation undergone in the adapta-
tion, and conversion, of the meningeal coverings of the
optic processes for structural purposes, we see the dura
mater converted into the sclerotic coat, and the arachno-pia
mater into the choroid coat, of the eye, and made suitably
supporting, and nutritional, media, for its accommodation,
and growth, as well as for the yielding of liquid materials,
suitable for the formation, and continual renewal, of its
vitreous and aqueous humours, from the inter-meningeal
spaces, and their contained cerebro-spinal fluid. Simul-
taneously with this meningeal transformation take place the
growth, and evolution, of the true nervine textural elements
of the optic organism, and the complete dove-tailing of its
nervous, and non-nervous, elements, whereby its receptivity
of, and susceptibility to, the influence of light energy are
finally obtained, together with the meso-blastic interpola-
tion, or grafting, of the crystalline lens, and the formative
completion of the resulting structure as an organ of
sight.
The evidences of design so abundantly observed in all these
developmental phenomena, and the unerring adaptation of
means to ends displayed in the formative processes referred
to, along with the absolutely equipoised, and effective,
exercise of vital energy, truly reveal that the " law of
evolution " is but a scientifically convenient name for an
intelligence, and power, which it is impossible, and would
be puerile, to attempt to ignore. Moreover, we discover
here that a great evolutionary event, or perhaps the
greatest in the evolutionary history of man, has been
wrought, by which the inner man is enabled to look literally
out at, and is looked in upon by, the outer world, and has
revealed to him the great facts of the existence of two
entities, viz. the ego and the non-ego, together with much
that goes to make up the sum of human knowledge.
400
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
The first pair of cephalic nerves (Fig. 130), in like
manner, originate from hollow extensions of the fore-brain,
which terminate over the cribriform plates of the ethmoid
bone, where they carry with them their meningeal coverings,
separated by their intervening spaces, and fluid contents,
the latter of which they discharge, or distil, into the nasal
.sJl
Fig. 130. — Orbital surface of the frontal lobe, and island of
Reil. Natural size. (Turner.)
The island (I.R.) is exposed by removal of the apex of the temporo sphenoidal lobe.
T.S., cut ridge of this lobe; a.p.s, anterior perforated space; a.s.R., p.s.R.,
anterior and posterior limiting sulci of the island ; op, operculum of the island.
tr.s., tri-radiate sulcus; i.o.c, a.o.c, and p.o.c , internal, anterior, and posterior
orbital convolutions; olf.s., end of the olfactory sulcus; olf.tr., olfactory tract,
bifurcating behind into the two roots inner and outer ; m, middle root or tuber
olfactorium.
passages through the glandular mechanisms of their lining
mucosa, thus allowing of their performing the double func-
tions of sense organs and lymph excretory agencies. This
mention of nasal cerebro-spinal lymph excretion brings to
our mind that we might here take another opportunity of
enumerating the various channels of exit, or excretion, with
which we have had occasion to deal in our inconsecutive
treatment of the great subject of cerebro-spinal lymph
disposal. Besides the nasal excretion of cerebro-spinal
THE ORGANS OF SENSE 401
lymph, we have had to mention, or describe, in more or
less full detail, excretion from the glandular organs, the
pituitary and pineal, of the third ventricle, which may be
looked upon as the great excretory mechanism of the
central brain structures, and, consequently, the most
elaborate and intrinsically perfect system of vital residuum
disposal to be discovered in a survey of the whole system ;
excretion from the spinal inter-meningeal spaces through
their continuation along the filum terminate, the coccygeal
gland, bladder or lymph heart, and an outflow series of
channels, or ducts, terminating in, and around, the anal
orifice of the alimentary canal, where they have been pro-
vided in the metamorphic materials laid down on the
differentiation of the neurenteric canal ; excretion by the
skin through its sweat glands — truly a vast excretory
area — excretion by, and through, the optic apparatuses,
excretion by, and through, the auditory organisms via the
Eustachian tubes, and into the spinal intra-dural matrix by
the ductus ; excretion through the pneumogastrics into all
the viscera, with which they are in textural, or histological,
relationship, and excretion by all the fibres of communica-
tion distributed to the sympathetic nervous system, with
secondary excretion therefrom into the parenchyma of
organs, into the great serous cavities, through the mucous
surfaces, and into the recesses of the cellular, and connec-
tive tissues, as well as excretion by the motor nervature
into the muscular tissues, tendons, periosteal textures, joint
cavities, and bones, their central marrow, and the vascular
textures developed therein, by which final neuro-systemic
excretion is effected through neuro-systemic excretory
agencies.
2 c
EXTRACT XXXVII.
ON THE RELATIVE PROPORTIONS OF THE GREY AND
WHITE MATTER OF THE BRAIN AND CORD, AND
THE MANNER OF UNION BETWEEN THE SENSORY
AND MOTOR AND THE PSYCHIC NEURONS.
The true proportions, relatively to each other, of the
white and grey matter, as they are distributed through-
out the three great central nerve organisms, the brain,
cord, and ganglia, is a question of the greatest interest
to the neurologist, but necessarily a question that must
remain unanswered, inasmuch as the proportion must
necessarily differ, in each human organism, at every
particular phase of its life ; it must, therefore, be regarded
as varying, as much as any other morphological feature,
or element, varies, in the various members, or units, of the
human race. It seems quite true, however, that the value
placed by science on a relatively high proportion of grey
matter to white is founded on truth, deducible from
anatomical and histological data. Thus, we may take it
that anatomy teaches that the grey matter is dependent
for the possession of its distinguishing characteristic of
colour on a vital, and material, difference in structure
between it and the white, and that the particular, or
peculiar, pigmentation of the grey matter would itself
suggest, that the active blood circulation must be the
determining agency, on account of the presence in its
blood-conveyed materials of pigmentary matter just suit-
able for conferring the particular shade of colouring
possessed by the grey matter : this suggestion, moreover,
would seem to be warranted also from the process of
SENSORY, MOTOR & PSYCHIC NEURONS 403
blood change going on within the elements of that fluid
as it passes through the peculiar chemico-physical changes
characteristic of the pia mater metabolism, consisting
mainly of the separation from the blood stream of
cerebro-spinal lymph, to maintain the circulation of that
fluid throughout its whole extent, and the deposition of
glial substance within the neuroglial matrix, for the suste-
nance of the nerve units, or neurons, with the necessary,
and the consequent, intensification of the colouring of
the remainder, or residuum, of the blood substance, and
hence the conferring on that remainder of the peculiar
shade so markedly belonging to the " grey matter." That
colour is neither in the overlying, or inter-penetrating,
cerebro-spinal fluid, the proper neuronal structures, nor
the glial substance on which the neurons are supported ;
it must, therefore, be intimately connected with the
capillary blood vasculature, and its contents, as it passes
through it the residual blood material of the pial
circulation.
This colour is only observed where nerve cell growth
is in progress, or where the neurons arise as cells from
the neuroglial matrix, or feltage, and pass out into the
white substance as axonal processes, to be connected with
other nerve cells, or to be distributed as nerve terminals
to skin or muscle, according as they are sensory or
motor. Those cells, therefore, which are not terminal,
sensory, or motor, nerve cells, must end individually by
passing into, or through, other nerve cells, which must
also necessarily be surrounded by a matrix of grey sub-
stance, and thereafter end in sensory or motor terminals,
or in turn pass through further grey matter extensions
until they finally reach their terminal stage of distribution
in, or to, sensory or motor textures ; from which it
becomes obvious that a large proportion of the cerebral
neurons must begin and end histologically and func-
tionally there, i.e. within the proper structural matrix of
the cerebrum, and, therefore, that they do not necessarily
directly pass out into the peripheral regions of the systemic
nervous system. The widely distributed areas of grey
substance to be seen overlying and inter-penetrating that
organ, therefore, thus assume the character of great
4o4 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
internally working neural structural necessities, when we
consider that perhaps the greater part of cerebration, con-
scious and unconscious, is confined within the precincts
of the brain proper, beginning and ending there without
necessarily disturbing, to an appreciable extent, the outer
nervine calm, or making much, if any, impression on
memory. All this vast region of non-peripherally related
neuronal activity pertains to the constant ordinary, as well
as the higher intellectual and transcendental, regions of
man's everyday life and experience, and constitutes a
great portion of " the weft and the woof" of the inner
life fabric, and determines whether it will be perishing, or
lasting, as a contribution to the daily and hourly record of
individual effort.
In this highest sphere of psychological activity we enter
in reality the region of human anatomy, where material
mechanism is constructed for the performance of func-
tions of a materio-dynamic character, the quality of which
can only be dimly appreciated by the exercise of those
inherent or innate hyper- or meta-physical human
qualities which more or less pervade the records of the
highest types of materio-dynamic philosophy and spiritual
insight. From this point of view it becomes evident that
" a whole cosmos " of human experience is confined within
the non-peripherally related^ or the highest cerebral centres^
where the higher sensory centres, and the great motor
centres, are co-related with, but prohibited from entering,
the great mental areas, where the ego, the seat of
consciousness and abstract thinking and reasoning, abides,
protected, if not free, from friction with the external
world, and at liberty solitarily to cogitate, associate, and
perchance commingle in activity, with materio-dynamic
and spiritual existences on lines altogether transcendental,
but nevertheless appreciable by the intellect, or perhaps
visible to the u mind's eye," and defined more or less
clearly by the c< exponents of things spiritual " — as seen
in what they have handed down to us in the pages of
revelation, and the works of " light and leading " which
from time to time have been " given to the world " by
the highest types of humanity. The mind of man has
hus an indefinitely large cerebral materio-dynamic field
SENSORY, MOTOR & PSYCHIC NEURONS 405
in which to grow and unfold itself, and to lay the founda-
tion of a spiritual being, or existence, which will ultimately
outgrow and overshadow its material environment, and
on the dissolution of which it will be absolutely capable
of a separate existence, and continued development. The
certainty of this is absolute, and incapable of disproof,
being founded on dynamic law, which is as absolutely
unalterable and inexorable in its operation as any of the
eternal laws of nature, or of truth, known to science, or
to revelation, so far as the human intellect can realise
them. The material basis, or cerebral matrix, in which
the higher intellectual operations of the brain are carried
on, may, roughly speaking, be taken as composed of those
neurons which arise from, and end in, the grey matter of
the brain, cortical and central, and which do not, there-
fore, directly subserve the materio-dynamic purposes of
the peripherally related cerebro-spinal, or central, nervous
system. It is thus a region of cerebral structure which
does not lend itself well experimentally to the exact
psychological disentanglement of its local histological
elements into their various functional areas according to
the character of their respective mental roles in the
working of the material and immaterial organisms, so
to speak, of the mind ; or, in other words, the experi-
mental methods of physiological interpretation, to which
our present knowledge of the nervous system and its
working owes so much for its advancement, cannot be
made serviceable when applied to the elucidation of the
laws of the genesis and evolution of mental phenomena
from brain matrix and mental dynamics.
The vast congeries of cerebral neurons situated above
and beyond the points of origin and the " spheres of
influence " of the histologically connected, and functionally
co-related, systemic nerve centres, represent the areas of
cerebral matrix whose functions are purely or peculiarly
intellectual, and therefore entirely occupied with the
highest ranges of human work and destiny. Within
this uppermost and innermost cerebral region there can
be no doubt that the same physiological laws of meta-
bolism, the same reign of material law and order, but a
much higher range of dynamic work or activity, prevails,
4o6 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
to the end that hereby man may attain a condition of
mental and moral advancement, to which there is no
approach elsewhere observable throughout the whole
kingdom of animated nature.
These cerebral areas of intellectualism would seem to
be confined within the structures situated above the
tentorium cerebelli, or in that region of the great central
nervous system situated within the anterior, middle, and
posterior cephalic or brain spaces, where also the great
connecting centres of sensory and motor nervine activities
become linked up, united to, and blended with those of
mind proper.
The manner of the union of these kindred, but dis-
tinctive nerve elements, however, is a subject too subtle
and transcendental to do more than mention ; neverthe-
less, we are persuaded, from the analogies which are
observable in somewhat kindred relationships, that
materio-dynamic conditions regulate and determine it,
on the same consummate physiological, and we may add,
psychological, lines, that can be so lucidly traced through
great areas of that complex and far-reaching subject of
brain and nerve anatomy. Within the cerebrum, material
agencies and mechanisms co-exist, capable of acting singly
or conjointly, accordingly as the mental and bodily
materio-dynamic conditions require and necessitate, and
accordingly as they are actuated by altogether central,
peripheral, or combined nerve energy ; besides modes of
nervine activity which are more or less constantly mani-
fested, consisting of purely mental, sensory, and motor
impulses, each, it may be, occurring independently by
itself, or in conjunction with, or succession to, others.
Much discussion of the subject of neuronal growth, and
nerve cell disposition of axis-cylinder substance, has been
indulged in by neurologists, but it cannot yet be said
that more than tentative opinion prevails on it ; thus, we
may suppose that strands of axis-cylinder substance,
emanating from the first, or earliest, spongioblasts cortical
ranges of the ectoderm or the most remote cortical nerve
cells, and from the most distal and profound ranges of
centrally originating cells, within the domain of the
mentally endowed areas of the succeeding embryonic
SENSORY, MOTOR & PSYCHIC NEURONS 407
layers of grey substance, without being broken up, are
received, rearranged, and passed on by the second, to the
next interpolated cells, to be finally distributed, in terminal
arborisations, peripherally, or in continued successional
cell progress, until at last they pass into, and become
structurally incorporated with, the cutaneous and skeletal
textures, to which the systemic nervature is finally dis-
tributed. Be that as it may, the manner of union
between successive neurons, through axis-cylinder sub-
stance agency, allows of independent activity of each
nerve cell unit, and secures its contribution of individual
functional work to the sum of communal neuronal work,
and the credit of the entire cerebro-spinal neuro-dynamic
industry.
The relationships between the absolutely mental neu-
rons, the cerebro-spinal, sensory, and motor neurons, and
the co-related sympathetic nervature, are of the most
profoundly intricate and, so to speak, remote character,
as well as of the most delicate nature structurally, so that
the most powerful microscopes fail to penetrate their
inner mode of working, and the most finished modes of
experimentation fail to elicit more than the faintest flashes
of intelligible meaning and information ; here, therefore,
a great deal must needs be taken for granted, and a
scientific faith must needs be exercised, which will place
the votaries of science on a platform almost identical
with that held by the exponents of revelation and
theology.
As bearing on the understanding of the working of
the neuro-dynamic machinery of the highest, or mental,
nerve centres, we would quote, as a quite relevant
speculation, founded on a species .of textural elimination
of the various cerebral contents, a study of this series
called : "In search for the home of the ego/' in which
it is claimed that the totality of the nucleoli of what we
would now call the mental, or psychic, nerve cells constitutes
that " home," or the particular, or peculiar, habitat of
the mind.
The mental nerve cells, or mind occupied neurons^ of the
cortical and central grey substance of the cerebrum, end
in the central, or upper, cerebro-spinal, sensory, and
408
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
motor areas, and therefore issue as proper cerebro-spinal
neurons, with their nerve terminal expansions situated at
various levels, from the cephalic base to the posterior
extremity of the spinal cord.
The peculiar local distribution and textural arrangement
and relationships of the grey and white substances of the
Fig. 131.— Different views of a portion of the spinal cord from
THE CERVICAL REGION WITH THE ROOTS OF THE NERVES. Slightly
enlarged. (Allen Thomson.)
In A, the anterior surface of the specimen is shown, the anterior nerve-root of the
right side having been divided ; in B, a view of the right side is given ; in C, the
upper surface is shown ; in D, the nerve roots and ganglion are shown from below.
1, the anterior median fissure; 2, posterior median fissure; 3, antero-lateral im-
pression, over which the bundles of the anterior nerve-root are seen to spread
(this impression is too distinct in the figure) ; 4, postero-lateral groove into which
the bundles of the posterior root are seen to sink ; 5, anterior root ; 5', in A, the
anterior root divided and turned upwards ; 6, the posterior root, the fibres of which
pass into the ganglion, 6' ; 7, the united or compound nerve ; 7', the posterior
primary branch, seen in A and D to be derived in part from the anterior and in
part from the posterior root.
brain and cord respectively undergo great changes both
within and without the skull, these relationships, in regard
to peripheral and central, or superficial and deep layering,
undergoing a complete textural metastasis on the elimi-
nation of the purely mental structural elements, whereby,
after passing through the medulla oblongata, the grey
matter assumes a united bicrescentic (Fig. 131), or H
shape, surrounded by the white matter, in well-defined
SENSORY, MOTOR & PSYCHIC NEURONS 409
columns of co-related histological extensions of the upper
cerebro-spinal axons, and the succeeding spinal axons,
sensory and motor, as they are given off or received by
the various spinal nerve trunks ; the gross quantity of
the grey matter undergoing increase where the great
plexuses are formed for the innervation of the upper and
lower limbs respectively, and where necessarily the glial
substance must be present in increased quantity to meet
the nutritional wants of the increased neuronal expendi-
ture, sensory and motor, or cutaneous and muscular.
The contrasting arrangements as to position of the
intra-cephalic and intra-spinal (see Fig. 131) grey and
white matter are very striking, and seem to suggest
a " natural selection " of a profound character, as being
the determining influence — such that the true neuronal,
or nerve cell, areas require an environment of the most
protected and insulated character possible, and that nature
procured these wherever she could consistently with
material necessity and functional advantage. Thus,
immediately under the protective influence of the skull
meninges and the cerebro-spinal fluid, as well as under
the more resistant local structural developments and
arrangements of the white, or connecting and conducting,
substance of the brain, and within a complete encasement
of resistant white matter in the spinal cord, nature has
sought to procure protection and support, for perhaps
the most invaluable, as well as the most highly functioned
and important structures of the body, and so has once
more displayed a marvellous adaptation of means to
ends, and an example of design which calls for recog-
nition, as one of the most outstanding, and embryonically
the latest, in the whole category of such " natural
wonders."
EXTRACT XXXVIII. a.
ON SOME VIEWS OF THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS
OF THE SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM— IN-
CLUDING NERVINE NUTRITION AND NERVE FORCE
EQUILIBRATION.
We have already stated that this system — the sympathetic
or its equivalent — exists in all living structures, and that
the energy generated by it is equivalent to vital energy,
and in fact constitutes life, as displayed in all living
organised textures, whether animal or vegetable. In
vegetable, and in the lower forms of animal structure,
we have not yet succeeded in determining the method
of production, nor in fully displaying the channels, or
fibres, along which this energy travels from the producing
to the energised, or innervated, textures, yet we feel
warranted in claiming that such energy does travel, or
circulate, in definite lines throughout and within the limits
of every such organic form or texture, in virtue of which
that organic form or texture lives and has its being.
It may well be that the most skilful dissection, the
most scientific use of reagents, and the most adept
application of the highest powers of our microscopic
aids, have hitherto failed in enabling us to trace the
inner workings of this most inscrutable system in the
cryptic regions of almost homogeneous living textures,
and non-differentiated structural elements, in its main-
tenance of life, and regulation of the processes of
metabolic change and exchange, for does not the great
*' Secret of life " itself lie here ? If, however, our views
on the subject can be widened by one hair's-breadth,
or made more definite, it behoves us not to rest content
SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM 41 1
within our present " range of vision," but to take the
required step forward into the dimness of the unexplored.
In taking this step, and peering round us for a glimpse
of any definite structure, or structures, which can or may
perchance be utilised by this sympathetic, or life main-
taining, nervous system, for carrying out its fundamentally
important vital work, we have been struck with one out-
standing universally present fact, viz. the presence, in
overwhelming profusion, of a minute "structural ele-
ment," the cell, and its contained nucleus and nucleolus
inter-penetrating, in fact, constituting the structure of all
organised structures, including the systemic nervous
system, and variously known, according to the particular
texture in which it is observed, as " proper organic "
cell, connective tissue cell, and in fact every special cell,
— apart from systemic nerve cell — wherever cell develop-
ments occur throughout the manifold textures and viscera
of the organised body ; it may, by the processes of
elimination and combination, therefore, be claimed that
herein, and hereby, the problems of living matter are being
exhibited and exemplified or wrought out. This univer-
sally distributed minute structural element, we cannot
help thinking, is the required structural medium through
which sympathetic nerve force or vital energy is generated
and distributed to living tissue, or organic matter ; and
that, while it no doubt is inextricably bound up with the
more highly developed and functioned systemic nervous
system, it is alone responsible for the maintenance of
life and the supervision of the great functions of nutrition,
growth, and the " continuance of the species." Thus, all
involuntary movement, much of the so-called automatic
action of the more highly developed textural elements of
animal life, and all the purely vital activities of the animal
and vegetable worlds, may be claimed as absolutely due to
sympathetic nerve influence, generated in and radiated from
the true, or specific, nerve elements properly belonging to
that system.
Thus, the sympathetic nervous system may be said to
energise all living organic substances, morphous and
amorphous, in proportion to their degree of develop-
ment, textural differentiation and vital requirements, and
4i2 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
according to their importance in the economy of the
particular animal, or vegetable, organism that may happen
to be the subject of observation.
Viewed thus, we may take it that the sympathetic
nervous system is, in reality, structurally composed of
every cell and connective fibre, forming the organised
and innervated body, with their contained nuclear and
nucleolar developments, or that the sympathetic energy,
or life, is generated and distributed through their instru-
mentality by the genetic and radiating powers of the
nuclei and nucleoli, and if this be so, we may further
conclude that the sympathetic nervous system, so called,
must have the further function, in analogy to the systemic
nervous system, of distributing by its cell processes —
after having secreted — nutritive plasma, as well as energy,
to every texture with which it is in functional relationship.
The function of nutrition would thus become entirely a
nervous function, every cell secreting from its surrounding
blood-borne organic plasma through its wall, or by some of
its processes, the necessary pabulum for its own main-
tenance, as well as that of its contained nuclei and nucleoli
and related organic texture, or cells, and excreting by others
of its fibrous processes, or through its wall, its effete
materials into the surrounding organic matrix, to be re-
moved by the various lymphatic agencies with which it
is so abundantly supplied, and by, or through, the free
surfaces of the coverings and the linings of the spaces and
inter-space's with which it is surrounded and whence it
is directly removed. Therefore, every cell being a living
unit, and living in virtue of its histological connection
with, and innervation by, nerve structure and force, it
follows that nerve texture and nerve energy must regulate
and sustain the vital processes of nutrition, growth, and
repair, from their inception in the gastro-intestinal canal,
until their termination and disintegration and excretion by
an unbroken series of circulatory acts, following each
other in regular and unbroken succession, and once more
illustrating the truth of our assertion : circulatio circula-
tionum, omnia circulatio. Consequently nutrition, apart
from its purely chemico-metabolic aspects, is a physical
process dependent on nerve circulatory agencies, and
SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM 413
occupies organically the gap existing between the termina-
tion of the haemal circulatory economy, on the one hand,
and the beginning of the lymphatic collecting mechanism
and circulation on the other. A metabolic "dumping
ground," so to speak, being thus provided for both the
incoming, or nutritive, and the outgoing, or effete, circu-
latory materials.
Nutrition, thus carried on, secures an atoxic, or 'non-
autotoxic, condition of the pabulum supplied to the
various textures nourished, inasmuch as the effete and toxic
materials of the disintegrating textures are moved on and
eliminated from them by, and before, the inflow of the
fresh, or substitutive, material with which they are re-
placed— the one continuous circulatory movement sufficing
for the necessities of the processes of disintegration and
integration of the tissue involved in every, even molecular,
act of nutrition.
Nutrition, consequently, may be regarded as the process
of organisation in more or less permanent form, or the
reorganisation of organic, or organisable, materials to meet
the losses and fill up the vacua dependent on disintegra-
tion, and the wasting effects of " tear and wear." The first
nutritive act of every organic unit must, therefore, date
from, or coincide with, the earliest period of independent
organic existence, and be dependent upon the selective
and integrative operation of sympathetic nerve energy or
organisable matter, by and through the inherited or trans-
mitted sympathetic, or vital, nerve energy perpetuated in
the fecundated ovum and kariokineted cell bodies.
Every cell must thus be looked upon as embodying
the principle of life, and capable of sustaining a separate
existence, in virtue of its being vitalised and sustained
by its inherent and transmitted sympathetic nerve energy;
its parentage and environment determining whether its
life-work is to be individual or communal.
The sympathetic nervous system, of all the systemic
nervous system bearing animal creation, must, conse-
quently, be regarded as composed of every non-systemic
nerve cell within the individual animal, and, therefore,
that it must operate through and by these cells in the
performance of all organic operations concerned in the
4H BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
nutrition, growth, and cell life-work generally of each
individual animal ; in other words, the sympathetic nervous
system must be regarded as co-extensive with the living
fibro-cellular structures of the animal body, whose indivi-
dual cell vital energy it supplies, and whose united cell
life-work it directs in the performance of organic function,
for the accomplishment of the ends necessitated by its
environment, and its destined purpose in the execution
and economy of " nature's plan." The vital physics
involved in the performing of sympathetic nerve functions
illustrate the continuation in every living organism of
the great process of circulation within the domain of
nutritive action, and displays that process reduced to
the disposal of atomic quantities, or proportions, in the
"give and take," the integration, and disintegration ; the
synthesis and analysis continually occurring in living
tissue — one atom following another, and one replacing
another, as the chemico-physical processes of life and vital
atomic friction determine in the kaleidoscopic arrange-
ments and re-arrangements of living matter.
Moreover, that vital force, or energy, which constitutes
life, animal and vegetable alike, circulates through fibrous
media and along atomic lines, provided by the ultimate
atomic, or molecular, disposition of vitally disposed matter,
amid the profuse, but ordered, array of the cell textures of
organic tissues. Circulation, on definite lines, and along
definite paths, thus characterises the movements of both
living matter and vital energy in the process of nutrition
in the maintenance of the individual cell life, as well as in
the communal arrangement and collective working of
the cells, in organised groups, as individual plants and
animals, as, for example, in the amoeboid mono-cellular
organism, or the primal organised unit.
The normal, or perfect, physiological working of this
law of circulation, must, therefore, be regarded as the
sine qua non of health, and as requisite for enabling both
the cell unit and the cell combination to perform the
peculiar and intrinsic work, for which it and they are
respectively adapted, and called upon by nature to exe-
cute. Any disturbance of this circulation must, in like
manner, be attended by pathological consequences, of
SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM 415
a magnitude in proportion to the extent of that disturb-
ance, and ranging, it may be, from a wholesale, or en
masse degree, to an atomic, or infinitesimal, fraction.
The sympathetic nervous system thus, being co-exten-
sive or synonymous with the whole structures of organic
life, evolves from itself, as its highest or crowning example
and stretch of functional activity, the systemic nervous
system, to which it delegates the performance of those
higher nervine functions which, in the higher animal
forms, are super-imposed on those belonging to and
characterising merely organic life. The connection, histo-
logical and functional, between the system is, therefore,
one of continuity and inter-dependence, so intimate and
co-ordinate that the one vitality or life animates the whole
organism, while departmentally is delegated to each of
the nervous systems duties peculiar to each, and capable
of being performed by it alone — between these two de-
partments of special nervine work, however, are neutral
or dual areas in the nervine work, contributed to by
both systems, in which each can substitute to a limited
extent the other — thus the innervation of the abdominal
viscera of the organs of circulation and respiration may
be contributed, to some extent, by both systems, the one
aiding, or supplementing, the other, when called upon
to do so, under certain circumstances.
In relation to this doctrine of reciprocity, or dual con-
trol, between the sympathetic and systemic nervatures,
the view might reasonably be advanced that under certain
circumstances, in which the genesis of nerve energy is
defective in the one or the other, energy can be transferred
from the one to the other, in order to the insurance of
continuity of function in the whole area innervated by
both. Systemic nerve cells and centres and sympathetic
ganglia may, therefore, be regarded as magazines or
accumulators, as well as producers and transmitters, of
nerve energy, and the performers of the very vital function
of equilibration of nerve, or vital, energy throughout the
whole nerve commonwealth, and related so-called non-
nervous elements.
Equilibration of nerve, or vital, energy is a nervine
function of the very greatest importance in every dually
4i 6 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
innervated body, but becomes of paramount importance
in the human body, where nervine agency is in evidence
infinitely beyond the proportions existing in any of the
lower animals, in which its production and conservation
seldom reach the degree of explosive dimensions fre-
quently attained in man.
We thus realise the value, to some extent, of the com-
bined evolutionary continuity and distinctness, structural
and functional, characterising the development and working
of the two nervous systems, and the security that it affords
against the occurrence of the explosions or "nerve storms,"
so familiar to the clinical observer, by the allowance of
" points of exit " for pent-up nerve energy, whereby its
escape may be effected along secure and inhibited channels
into the peripheral regions of the general nervature,
without the occurrence of cataclysmic or disastrous con-
sequences ; hence the attainment of nervine equilibration,
or the measured production and distribution of nerve or
vital energy, is secured or made possible throughout the
entire dual nervatures by dynamic discharges into the
less, or faintly, nervous connective structural elements to
which they are distributed.
Faultily effected nervine equilibration, from whatever
cause and to whatever degree, must always, therefore, rank
as a proportionately more likely occurrence in man than
in his nearest neighbours in the animal scale, and rationally
devised measures of prevention must consequently be
adopted in order to neutralise, or prevent it.
Such diseases as epilepsy, spasm, etc., are relatively
more frequent in the human species than in the lower
animals, and we conclude that the reason for this is to
be found here ; we, therefore, bespeak a more profound
consideration of the problems of nerve force production,
storage, and distribution, with the involved principles of
nerve force equilibration, in order that the whole subject
should be raised to a higher and more scientific platform,
than it has hitherto occupied in applied medicine.
Equilibrium, in its etymology, signifies an equipoised or
balanced state of things, and is applicable to conditions
of rest and motion of simple and complex bodies alike,
as well as to states of static and dynamic existence of
SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM 417
individual organised structures and of whole organisms.
It therefore may be regarded as the condition to be sought
after, whenever a disturbance of organ, or function, ensues
from any cause throughout our own organism, and when
our scientific knowledge is appealed to to prescribe the
means of its re-attainment in others, the importance
of its practical and utilitarian bearings will thus at once
appear. Equilibrium, in the highly complex organism
of man, is a matter over which nature fortunately watches
with great care, and usually, if left alone, is quite able
unaided, except by passive submission, to maintain and
to retain, by virtue of her application of the vis medicatrix,
to the right place and at the right time ; it behoves us,
therefore, at all times, except when obstacles or impossi-
bilities are placed in her way, and the removal of these
is then dictated, to trust and dutifully aid her in her
beneficent and often ill-requited work.
On a little thought and consideration of the subject
of want of equilibrium, as it concerns and flows out of
the conditions surrounding man, it will become obvious
that it may make itself apparent and have its inception
in any, or all, aspects of his being — i.e. physical, mental,
or moral ; and that, therefore, its re-attainment by the vis
medicatrix nature has at times to be aided and supple-
mented by the forces of civilisation known as medicine,
law, and divinity, although, that these are unfortunately
sometimes ineffectual as aids, from the want of rational
and concerted application, is only too obvious an ex-
perience. The application by nature of her vis medicatrix,
therefore, requires the rational and concerted use of every
means provided by civilisation, in order that she may be
able to place the human species on the high platform of
moral, mental, and physical health, to which it is on non-
utopian lines entitled to be placed, and which the whole
history of the race up till now proves that it is longing
for, if not always striving after. Disturbance of physical
equilibrium in the individual organism may be universal,
or local, may involve a system or systems, a viscus, organ,
or tissue, and, therefore, may be felt as a disease, only
faintly appreciated, or pass altogether unobserved, accord-
ing to its extent and incidence. Thus, it may involve
2 D
4i 8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
the fluids of the body, and be felt wherever these fluids,
or such part of them as is affected, penetrate ; if it
involves the nervous system it is felt generally, or locally,
according to which of its textures or enclosing elements
happens to be implicated ; if it affects a viscus, or organ,
it is felt throughout that viscus or organ, and within the
radius of neighbouring parts included in its range of
influence ; or if it affects an organic structure only, then
it is realised only within the confines of that organic
structure, or, at the most, within a very limited area. This
being so, we need scarcely say that the scientific and prac-
tical bearings of the subject will more and more obtrude
themselves on our notice, and we feel ourselves constrained
to insist that too much importance can scarcely be claimed
for it, as it clearly appears that it must affect alike the
work of diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of disease,
which is the raison d'etre of one of the greatest professions,
as well as the progress of scientific research, as it affects
the destiny and well-being of man.
Disturbed physical equilibrium necessitates, for its
development and decline, "a full swing of the pendulum,"
so to speak, in whatever sphere of the organism it may be
met, and he who recognises the part or portion of the arc
of the circle involved in the particular swing, will be best
able to predict when that swing will terminate, with what
diminishing proportions the succeeding swing, or swings,
will be characterised, the time at which equilibrium will
be re-attained, and the measures, if any, to be adopted to
hasten, or secure, its re-attainment ; all which is, necessarily
of course, merely figurative, but we think capable of
translation into actuality with the exercise of that alert
intelligence, which is so abundantly displayed throughout
the world of medicine and surgery.
Equilibration in matters of disease, as here foreshadowed,
should, therefore, to our way of thinking, become a goal
for the practical worker in these spheres to reach, and
should repay the exercise of much clinical thought
and effort, and keep within more scientific lines the
endeavours to meet the requirements of the practisers of
the healing art, as servants of the public, and for the
satisfaction of their own amour propre.
EXTRACT XXXVIII. b.
ON THE COMPLETED SYMPATHETICO-SYSTEMIC
NERVOUS SYSTEM.
The completed nervous system may be said to embrace
its own particular textures as well as, relationally, the
whole of the textures to which its terminal fibres are
distributed, i.e. the cutaneous and other surfaces in which
the sensory nerve terminals terminate, and the musculature
in which the motor nerve terminals terminate, inasmuch
as these several structures are essential to the production
of nervine response to the action of nerve stimuli, and are
largely dependent for their growth and sustenance on the
direct nutritive influence and pabulum, or plasma, supplied
by the central nervous system. In this respect they, the
sensory and motor systemic nervatures, are equally and
alike outgrowths and continuations of central nerve
structures, and are alike necessary for the performance of
nerve function. In other words, these are the receptive
and delivering instrumentalities through which, and by
which, the central nervous system is dominated and
directed by the indwelling mind or the non-material
entity, inherent, or temporarily resident, in the material
organism, and through which it acts and is reacted upon
by the external world. Moreover, they represent what
may be designated as the central and essential part of our
being — for the life and service of which all the rest of our
material economy is instrumental and subservient, howsoever
elaborately constructed and seemingly essentially important
its various parts seem to be. These latter represent the
building, or material institution, so to speak, into which all
420 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
messages for the central government are conveyed, and
from which all instructions and commands are passed out
from that central government, the machinery of this
government being carried about by its movable structural
surroundings, is ever available for the determination of its
direction and destination, save in the intervals of sleep,
when the interim direction and safe " keeping of the
house," are delegated to the never-ceasing services and
the ubiquitous watchfulness of the sympathetic "partner
in the business." The necessity for a common develop-
mental evolution and an unbroken histological continuity
of nervature and musculature thus become obvious, the
central nervous system developing its future receptive
and operative appendices by a continuous process of
growth, or addition, until it becomes conterminous with
the living and acting structures of the entire body, thus
innervating its entirety from periphery to centre, and from
centre to periphery, within the greater structural area of
the great sympathetic nervature.
EXTRACT XXXVIII. c.
ON STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION AS OBSERVED IN THE
HUMAN BODY— PAR EXCELLENCE.
It may, we think, be accepted as axiomatic that every
structure and organ in the human body is constructed on
a definite plan, and for a definite purpose, which is
repeated with but slight variation, due mainly to environ-
ment, generation after generation, in the formative pro-
cesses of growth and evolution, and that, therefore, every
such structure and organ has a real and, so far, a vital,
function to perform within that body of which it forms a
part, of a co-operating, collective whole, and in which we
have to recognise it, in every instance, as an employee, or
worker, in the co-operative workshop, so to speak, and not,
as sometimes claimed, an inert or desiccated specimen in
a museum of " survivals." The prolonged process of
embryonic, foetal, and post-natal growth forms but an
organic evolutionary struggle, in which the final result is
the ''survival of the fittest," in structure and function, in
virtue of complete or absolute adaptation to special ends
and requirements, and of freedom from the preceding
structural limitations, due to the meeting of only temporary
and passing formative wants and conditions. We may,
therefore, accept it as a proved, and almost self-evident truth^
that the completely developed example of the genus homo
possesses not an atom of superfluous or functionless
texture, and that every " part and parcel " of his organism
has a duty to perform in his body corporate, and a raison
d'etre for its continued existence in the commonwealth of
his textures and organs. In short, man may be held to
422 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
illustrate in his material organism, in its various phases
of transition, the history of the evolution of life forms,
vegetable and animal, and to afford the last example of the
"survival of the fittest," not only in his individual and
representative capacity as a living organism, but as an
embodiment as well of the production and " survival of the
fittest " in his various textures and organs, the result also of
the rigorous operation of the laws of " natural selection,"
and the " survival of the fittest." The appraisement, there-
fore, of the systemic and individual values of these various
textures and organs must be made with a full sense of the
importance of each texture and organ to the maintenance
of the true physiological balance in the everyday activities
of life during its various stages.
The stages of development, and all life is developmental,
comprehended within the life of the representative human
being, may be summarised as the embryonic, fcetal, lacta-
tive, adolescent, adult, and senile, the first five stages, or
combined first stage, being evolutionary, or incremental,
the last, or senile, being involutionary, or decremental : all
which stages, however, constitute but one unbroken
sequence of developmental events, merging into each
other, and blending, so as to form a complete union.
Underlying and effecting this union is the foundation,
vegetative, structural, or organic arrangement of matter, by
parental or transmitted agency, in virtue of which the
independent existence of the incipient organism becomes
effected, by what may be called the operative, or formative,
potency of the primary or sympathetic nerve energy inherent
in the " primordial germ," on the surrounding plasmic
elements put within its reach, and capable of immediate
use, so as to secure the continuity of living forms, and the
succession of vital evolutionary developments " generation
after generation." Overlying, or inter-penetrating, the
vegetative, or purely organic and structural arrangement of
this organism, is the systemic nervous system, which has
been evolved from and added to it, and which ultimately,
to a great extent dominates it by its possession and exer-
cise of reason and will and the thousand and one attributes,
mental and moral, evolved from psychological development,
and added to the equipment of man, to enable him in
ON STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION 423
the fullest sense to " direct his course," so as to avoid
the harmful and dangerous, and to obtain the safe and
secure.
EXTRACT XXXIX. a.
ON NERVE FORCE, OR ENERGY,
Nerve energy is a form of force sui generis, yet difficult to
differentiate and distinguish from some other modes of
force, except that it can be produced in, and by, one form
of structure only, and, so far as we at present know, can
act or operate functionally through that structure only.
In its essential nature it is different from, yet resembles,
electricity, and can, in some minor degrees, be replaced by
it, but in all essential respects it is, as we have said, a mode
of force sui generis. The principle of vitality, or life, is
inseparably bound up with it, although vitality, or life, is
observable over a large proportion of the animated world,
where nerve force, as nerve force, may, or can, be inferred,
but does not definitely exist.
It may, however, be inferred from these remarks, and
the facts on which they are based, that the force animating
and sustaining the lower forms of life — or those in which
no nervous system has as yet been developed — or the
principle of vitality, is no other than the force which in the
upper regions of the organic world becomes concentrated
and focussed, so to speak, and requires for its production,
storage, and usage, a series of structures known as the
nervous system ; therefore, the nerve force can only be
vital force.
In this connection, we have thought it likely that sensory
impressions conveyed from the periphery, if unexhausted on
arrival at the receiving nerve cells, may be conserved there,
as in a " Leyden jar," for future use, as motor impulse,
or "food for thought," or exhausted and used up in
ON NERVE FORCE 425
transmission to higher centres, where it may be likewise
further stored, used up, or, it may be, spent pathologically
as a disease-exciting reflex, or reverse, current, or molecular
disturbance, as in some neuralgias, herpes zoster, or epileptic
" nerve storms."
For example, the sensory impressions, conveyed by the
peripheral nerves to the ganglionic cells of the spinal cord,
in a paraplegic, are, or seem to be, reflected in the form of
motor impulse to the muscles of the affected limbs, which
points to the conversion by the sensory ganglionic and
connected motor cells, of the cord, of sensory molecular
change, impulse, or impression, into motor molecular
change or impulse.
It, therefore, seems possible that peripheral impressions
may be thus stored in the cells of the spinal cord, and the
higher basal and cerebral centres, and that they may sub-
sequently, when necessary, be converted into motor im-
pulses, or be made available for higher functional, or even
intellectual, purposes, as memories, etc.
Nerve energy may thus be largely derived from without,
and stored up for future use by the cells so plentifully
present in the great cerebro-spinal system, as well as in
the attached sympathetic system ; and so the genesis proper
of nerve force, by the appropriate nerve structures, may be
supplemented and assisted by the collection and retention
of unused or residual sensory nerve force.
Another thought that has occurred to us in connection
with this aspect of the subject of nerve force is that a
recurrent molecular change, or nerve current, may be in-
duced in the motor nerve fibres, engaged in initiating and
maintaining muscular action, and transmitted in a reverse
manner to the higher centres as a measure, or neurometer^
so to speak, of the amount of nerve force expended in the
stimulation, or innervation, of the muscles engaged in any
given act, or series of acts, or movements, and that thus
an automatic mechanism is provided for the accomplish-
ment of the objects of a " muscular sense," and that, there-
fore, the principle of the " duplex current" is utilised in the
conveyance of nervine force.
Here we might further observe that sensory nerves
seem to afford, in certain conditions of the bodily health,
426 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
easier channels of exit for the escape of what may be called
recurrent or reflex nerve force, than motor nerves do, and
that the very frequent occurrence of herpetic eruptions, in
connection with febrile complaints, is an evidence of this.
This latter statement, moreover, might be supplemented by
the observation that spasm, local or general, is likewise
very frequently a consequence of reflex motor nerve
excitation in connection with numerous ailments. Be this
as it may, we further draw attention to the similarity, or
parallelism., which may be said to exist between an attack
of herpes zoster and an epileptic seizure, inasmuch as they
may both be said to be " nerve storms," the latter
involving muscular contraction, and the former evolving
pain and the effusion of serous fluid, besides the breaking
down of the surrounding sanguineous elements by neurolysis.
It will thus be seen that the principle of the duplex current
is at work in both the motor and sensory systems of nerves,
and that many diseases might be cited to illustrate the
extent of its operation.
Along with the phenomenon of the duplex current in
pathological conditions involving the affection of the sensory
system of nerves, as distinguished from the motor, is
frequently the production of acute pain, which here must
be regarded as due to the discharge, from the sensory nerve
terminals, of nerve force — a strange or morbid function —
in contradistinction to the receipt of impressions — their
normal function.
The genesis of the pain here alluded to, and the sense
of feeling of the pain itself, are most probably to be found
in violent molecular agitation of the intra-neural substance
of the nerve terminals, and probably neural rupture, with
subsequent escape of both neural material contents and
force. Such diseases as those mentioned, epilepsy, con-
vulsions, spasms, local and general, with pain, tingling,
itching, herpes in all its varieties,- as well as many other
diseases and individual symptoms, may all be described as
leakages of nerve force, due to nerve explosions of greater
or less severity, or violence, and of shorter, or longer,
duration, and emanating from either the motor, or sensory,
divisions of the nervous system.
EXTRACT XXXIX. b.
ON A PHYSIOLOGICAL PHENOMENON CONNECTED
WITH THE INITIATION AND TRANSMISSION OF
NERVE IMPULSE THROUGH, OR BY, THE NERVE
TERMINALS.
The thought strikes us that the presence of cerebro-spinal
fluid, or a fluici of like composition, is necessary at the
peripheral, or sensory, nerve endings, in order that special-
ised initial molecular changes may be communicated to the
terminal extremities of the axis cylinders preparatory to
the transmission of proper nerve impulses, and that this is
accomplished by its conveyance to, and storage in, the nerve
terminals, by means of the circulatory media of the nerve
fibres, and their attached peripheral expansions. This
doctrine will apply both to the systemic, or general, and
the sympathetic system of nerves in their afferent aspects.
It may be also, and we think must be, that a similar, or
corresponding, cerebro-spinal lymph mechanism is necessary
to effect the passage of motor, or efferent, impulses from
the motor nerve terminals to the contractile elements of
the muscular fibres, both striped and unstriped.
If this be true, we can perceive that channels for the
passage, or circulation, of the required fluid are ready pro-
vided in the inter-neurilemmar spaces of the nerve fibres,
sensory, motor, and sympathetic, and that the nerve ter-
minals, in a state of health, must always contain a sufficiency
to meet requirements.
Normal aesthesia may be supposed to follow a physio-
logically normal condition of this provision, while anaesthesia
and hyper-anaesthesia may be regarded as due, in like
428 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
manner, to its pathological or abnormal conditions —
paralysis and other disturbances of muscular contraction
likewise following the abnormal disposition of motor
terminal fibre lymph within its proper, or efferent,
channels.
EXTRACT XXXIX. c.
ON IS THERE SUCH A THING AS NEUROLYSIS, AND IS
IT AKIN TO ELECTROLYSIS ?
We have ventured on the use of the term neurolysis here,
to signify what seems to us a process seemingly akin in
character to that of electrolysis, and which at times results
in breaking up the physical, and it may be the chemical,
union of the constituent parts, or elements, of certain
physiological substances within, or in real or vital union
with the body— for example, as we observe in cases of
herpetic and other eruptions, where the composition of
the blood corpuscles, in- or out-side of the neighbouring
capillary vessels, undergoes a change, from being played
upon by discharges of nerve force, their physical con-
tinuity being dissolved, and their haemoglobin set free —
staining and colouring the vesicular contents into which
it escapes.
This process seems due, in such circumstances, to the
action of nerve, or nervine, force on the substance of the
corpuscles, or the corpuscular body substance, to which it
has gained direct access, by the breaking down of the
histological, or material, mechanism of the nerve endings,
and by the consequent escape of the nerve energy into
the surrounding circulatory and other textures ; this
process, moreover, as has before been contended, repre-
sents a reverse, or efferent, nerve force current along the
fibres of an afferent, sensory, or peripheral nerve, which,
we may be warranted in inferring, is likely to be much
more destructive to a terminal nerve apparatus — whose
function is to receive and transmit inward, and not to
430 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
deliver and transmit outward — than would be the case
were the current in the normal direction, and through the
terminal efferent nerve mechanism, which is naturally
adapted to the purpose.
EXTRACT XL. a.
PHYSICO-METAPHYSICAL.
On Life.
What is life ? is a question that has exercised the
thinking mind all along the ages, and that continues to
be asked with an earnestness and persistency, more even
than pristine in strength and volume, but the answer has
not yet been given. Neither the simple and direct
thinker, the acute observer, the profound formulator,
nor the scientific or brilliant exponent, have been able to
vouchsafe a reply which will, or can, satisfy the ques-
tioners ; and, therefore, the problem is likely increasingly
to continue to excite curiosity, and stimulate yet further
thought, it may be, to the remotest generations; and 'tis
well it should be so, for are not the wits of every genera-
tion thus sharpened on those of its predecessors by such
exercise, and are not its views of the subject in all its
aspects thereby deepened and broadened ? Thus it is,
that the curiosity of mankind is continually inciting to
enquiry, and enabling it to add to its stock of knowledge,
and to the attainment and exercise of a truer appreciation
and appraisement of its present state and future progress.
Therefore, though, as thus indicated, its " bump of
curiosity," together with " a little knowledge," is not
unattended with danger, as the history of the race
abundantly testifies, it has been of the utmost value in
the progress of civilisation and the advancement of science
in all its branches.
On life, as it seizes on and vitalises the raw materials
432 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
of the food supplied to our bodies, as it assimilates them
during the metabolic analysis and synthesis involved in
the process of nutrition, and evolves the true life of the
tissues, we have already to some extent dwelt ; the
phenomena displayed in the life of the uni-cellular, multi-
cellular, and the voluntarily controlled organism, we have
also endeavoured to describe. We, therefore, now would
consider the voluntarily controlled, or highest, type of life,
in its origin, graduated continuance, and independent
existence, as a process of evolution from a multi-cell
parentage, through the contact and commingling of vitalised
materials prepared and shed — vitalised, not de-vitalised —
by that parentage for perpetuative purposes. This evolu-
tionary process of parental genesis, or embryonic origin,
growth, adult fulness of development, and senile decay, re-
presents, in one individual organism, the stages of develop-
mental evolution of living forms in general. Thus,
the life of the individual voluntarily controlled organism
is begun in uni-cellular fashion, just as the primitive
uni-cellular organism is begun, and continues ; thus
also the life of the multi-cellular, but non-differentiated,
or sympathetically innervated, organism is paralleled by
the pre-systemic nervous system bearing stage of the
evolution of organic life forms in general, while the last
stage of fully developed systemically innervated organisa-
tion of the individual organism corresponds to the
concluding division of the animal kingdom, in the character
and manner of its innervation.
Life, therefore, as observed in the individual members
of the systemically innervated creation, and as traced by
the aid of palaeontology, throughout the long vista of
once living forms interred in the geological strata of the
earth's crust, as well as observation of the at present
existing fauna and flora of the globe, is found to be one
in type, in sequence of organic changes and events, and
in the character and intrinsic nature of the organic pur-
poses subserved by these organic changes and events.
Thus man himself, as the highest type and example of
the life forms that have descended, or rather ascended,
from the first created living unit, and have peopled the
ever-changing surface of the earth, its aqueous depths,
PHYSICO-METAPHYSICAL 433
and circumambient air, may be regarded as embodying in
himself, and his life history, an example of every form of
life, and the operation of every evolutionary principle
which has been at work in the production of individual
life forms, in accordance with the conditions of their
co-existent environment, for has his life experience not
been uni-cellular, multi-cellular, and voluntarily controlled
organic ? Besides, however, typifying ever variety of
preceding life forms in his own organic life changes, and
physical vicissitudes, he presents the culminating example
of a rationally controlled, responsive, and responsible
organism, attuned to higher, and absolutely unique, and
generic, or specific, ends and purposes, whereby a principle
has been introduced into the regulation of the direction
and modification of contemporary animal and vegetable
life, which has affected, and which no doubt will increas-
ingly continue to affect, its continuance and character.
In this light it seems, without stretching unduly the
scientific imagination, as if man, and his domestic pets and
beasts of burden, were at last, by " the survival of the
fittest," likely to be left in undisputed possession of terra
jirma, with an absolutely effective suzerainty over air and
water. In that state, let us hope, he will be very, if not
completely, happy, as the " monarch of all he surveys,"
as the director of the globe's affairs, as well as, so far as
he mav or can be, the determiner of its destiny !
The opinion is held by some that protoplasm can be
produced in the laboratory, and the inference drawn that
life can be originated de novo, with the comforting thought
that, if any catastrophe should annihilate life on the globe,
a "fortuitous concourse of atoms" would again originate
it, and renewed evolution would do the rest, and ultimately
restore the lost flora and fauna. This no doubt is an
example, in the scientific mind, of " the wish being father
to the thought." So far science has undoubtedly satisfied
itself that omne vivum ex vivo, and that, imitate nature's
productions as we may, we absolutely fail in infusing into
them the " principle of life," which, after the consummate
experiment of the production of pseudo- protoplasm,
ought spontaneously to vitalise its elements and initiate
the production and reproduction of the cell in definite
2 E
434 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
order of organic sequence and continuity. For this to
ensue, we must confess, it is necessary, so far as yet
proved, in all the higher forms of animal life, that two
dynamic, as well as two material, entities are necessary to
perpetuate life, and that these are prepared, energised, and
organised by two sets of organs situated respectively in
two separate living organisms, but are liable to wither or
to become de- vitalised, and die, unless brought into contact
with each other in a specific manner. When these pro-
toplasmic elements, already vitalised, coalesce, and with
their united energies, produce a unicellular organism,
capable of assuming a multi-cellular condition, and of
ultimately attaining to a degree of organic development
equal to that characterising the parentage from which
they originated, barring the influences of environment
and improper nutritive supply — a new unit will have
been added to the long total of highly organised beings
capable of continuing the " line of descent " with un-
diminished lustre, and, it may be, in increased perfection
of development.
EXTRACT XL. b.
ON LIFE— {continued).
Life, as it presents itself for observation, for the collec-
tion of facts thereanent, and for the deduction of the laws
relating thereto, is to be met with in the human body on its
most elaborate scale, and, in that it is always present with
us, it may, therefore, be constantly studied in its most
minute details and in its manifold workings, general and
particular. Thus, we can trace the vitalisation of the
elements of the raw pabulum with which we supply our
bodies, the organisation of these vitalised elements, the
working and inter-working of the organic parts of the
completely developed organism, and, at last, the involution
and dissolution of that organism. In this prolonged
process we have to observe the sequence of material
change as it is brought about by the play of vital energy
on the metamorphosing food elements, and to realise
the modifications undergone by these elements in their
re-conversion into their inorganic condition and return to
their original elemental state.
The process of vitalisation may be said to begin with
the reduction of the food elements into a plastic and
quasi-molecular condition, wherein they can become ab-
sorbed by the gastro-intestinal mucosa and passed into
the blood directly, or circulated through the vasculo-
glandular mechanism of the lacteals, where they become
organised into granular and lymphocite bodies, floating
in a homogeneous fluid matrix of richly nutritious fluid,
which becomes the basis of the liquor sanguinis. Here
we see the process of haemogenesis commenced, and the
436 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
foundation laid for the corpuscular organisation of the
blood materials, and the conveyance thereby of the nutri-
tive pabulum required by the various organs and tissues
of the body. Along the sanguineous channels of the
great blood circulation the corpuscular vehicles, in the
shape of red and white globules, take up and convey to
the most distant parts and apparently inaccessible " holes
and corners " of the body the fresh materials for organic
exchange, accompanied by the great fluid sweep and
onward flood of liquor sanguinis, all of which are
required for the accomplishment of the " thousand and
one " processes of repair and removal, and the mainten-
ance of structural health, which begin and end with life,
and which together constitute the organic phenomena
of life.
Up to this point, in the process of vitalisation and
distribution of food plasma, the living units may be
regarded as molecular, granular, and corpuscular in their
development, and free and unattached in their movements,
possessing a dynamic potency and power of material
distribution fitting them to minister to the wants of fixed
or non-mobile cell organisms ; but here, where the integral
organised structures proper of the body are reached by
the blood streams, or mobile fluid elements, a new principle
in the process of nutrition comes into use, in virtue of
which the fixed and non-mobile elements of that body are
ministered to by the mobile elements floated to them in
the form of these molecular, granular, and corpuscular
units. And here, moreover, what may be described as
the first great step in the ultimate phenomenon of
metabolism is effected by the primary fixing and incorpora-
tion of anabolic plasma, and its complete vitalisation and
assimilation on, it may be called, the "heels" of preceding
katabolism.
When the process of cell development and interstitial
incorporation of vitalised plasma has been reached, and
when the cell units have so multiplied that the simple and
elementary machinery of intra-cellular or nucleolar vitalisa-
tion has been outgrown, and when sympathetic innervation
can no longer overtake the vital necessities of the poly-
cellular organism, the grouping and arrangement of its
ON LIFE
437
cells is secured by the evolution or super-addition of what
is called a systemic nervous system, and finally the division
of the dually innervated organism into tissues, organs, and
limbs is effected by the conjoint agency of the three
special plans indicated of vitalisation and energisation, viz.
the molecular, granular or corpuscular, the cellular, and
the neuro-systemic.
Life, as thus viewed on its positive, or genetic, aspect,
begins with, or in, the process of digestion, wherein the
raw elements of the food are reduced to a molecular
condition, or consistence, energised and passed by gastro-
intestinal absorption and adeno-vascular manipulation and
circulation into the great sanguineous circulatory reposi-
tory, from which in turn the now vitalised, or potentially
dynamic, food elements are distributed to every structural
unit and tissue of the organised body, where they are
vitally integrated, or temporarily attached and made fully
subservient to the functional activities of life, and the
living requirements of the organism, or materio-dynamic
being. These bio-genetic changes constitute the materio-
dynamics of the evolutionary half of life, and insensibly,
but persistently, terminate in the involutionary half
where katabolic change sets in, and terminates by return-
ing to the inorganic world of matter, with the utmost
precision, every atom and molecule of the raw material
originally supplied for specific bio-genetic purposes, the
remaining vital dynamic entity in like manner and of
necessity being yielded up in its imperishable entirety
and exactitude.
The two aspects of vitality presented here — the evolu-
tionary and involutionary — to the observer of the working
of the materio-dynamic phenomena of life are, compara-
tively speaking, of proportionately equal extent and area,
and between them constitute the vast field on which
matter becomes alive, lives, and dies, and on which that
phase of vital dynamic activity is manifested, which
becomes appreciable to conscious being and realisable
by limited human intelligence, which realisation is but
faintly communicable from intelligence to intelligence,
through channels patent, but still almost indecipherable
from the " points of view " accessible to even the highest
438 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
intellects, so far as we have been able to gather from
retro-spection, intro-spection, and pro-spection of the vast
field comprised within the involved areas of already
explored " mind and matter," and known nature.
EXTRACT XL. c.
LIFE— WHAT IS IT? AND WHEN DOES IT BEGIN?
The above title and accompanying questions would seem
to require a treatise for their answer, and, after all, and at
the best, in the present ever-progressing state of science
(1902), it could only be tentative, as all preceding answers
to the questions have been ; nevertheless, every attempt at
an answer must allow, at any rate, the attempter an
opportunity of " taking stock " of his own and others'
knowledge on the subject, and, to that extent, be a
justification for placing on record any feeble effort he may
be able to make towards the answer.
Life, in the concrete, is applicable as a descriptive term
to the distinctively organic phenomena both of the vege-
table and animal worlds, and signifies the opposite of dead,
or inert, terms etymologically, which apply to the condition
of matter known as inorganic. Life, physiologically,
implies a state of active, organic, and synthetic, as opposed
to a passive, analytic, material condition, in virtue of the
play of vital energy on organisable matter. Usually it
begins, or rather continues, in an infinitesimal degree, in
definite units of living matter, developed by, detached
from, or left by, living matter ; it cannot begin indepen-
dently in dead matter, and assume, or take on itself, the
characteristics of new life, therefore, a first creative effort at
least was necessary to initiate the long succession of life
forms which has unfolded itself in obedience to a Great
First cause ', and the law of evolution. The principle of life,
as thus detached from preceding life, or living matter,
may be latent, or dormant, for long periods at a time, or
44Q BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
may spring into immediate activity, according as the
conditions of growth and nutrition come into existence
and are sustained. In the vegetable kingdom and parts
of the animal kingdom these conditions are usually
seasonal, but in the higher animal kingdom, where
seasonal vital activity is modified by the exercise of
instinct and intelligence, seasonal activity gives place to,
more or less, perennial activity. The conditions of life,
or vital activity, include the supply and influence of
caloric as a motive power in starting the latent or dormant
principle of life of the spore, cell unit, or fragment of the
preceding living organism or body, into a repetition of the
parental life-work^ along with the supply of organisable
pabulum, and " the free air of heaven," with its abundant
available oxygen, so absolutely necessary to all chemical
and chemico-physiological processes, be they organic or
inorganic.
Underlying all these conditions, and instrumental in
carrying out the behests of the dormant incipient life within
the living unit, and, in fact, inseparable from it, is the other
condition, the transmission of a latent^ or potential, arrangement
of the constituent molecules and atoms of that unit, which,
or whereby, on the arrival of the required vital conditions
and the irresistible impulse of active, in succession to
passive, life, initiates or begins the living career of a new
being.
This last but essential condition of transmitted latent
vital arrangement of molecule and atom, composing the
primordial germ, must operate through and by some
organic mode of force ', so to speak, and some instrumentality \
in virtue of the possession of which it can lick into organic
form — on the lines of the form from which, as an organic
unit or fragment, it has been detached — the organisable
material within its reach. This mode of force we regard
as really equivalent to sympathetic nerve force or energy, a
force which is stored up and detached with, as latent or
potential, every primordial or spermo-germ cell and carlo-
kinetic cell division, to be called into activity or formative
action, whenever the arrival of the required conditions
for its operation have been reached. This seemingly
indefinite, but absolutely essential, vital, molecular, and
LIFE— WHAT IS IT? 441
atomic fecundated condition and arrangement of the con-
stituent parts of the germ cell, or ultimate organic unit,
is the material foundation on which the mechanism of life
rests, through which it works, and by which it carries out
its incessant synthetic and analytic, chemico-physiological
processes of growth and decay, assimilation and dissipation,
integration and disintegration.
We shall call this ;i mode of force " sympathetic nerve
energy, for want of a simple expressive generic term, and
hope that it will be possible to invent a word which will
give full verbal expression to the meaning, without detri-
ment to the scientific accuracy of the phrase.
The definition, as here given, implies that this " mode
of force," after its operation through latent^ vital molecular \
and atomic methods^ gradually " takes unto itself" a mode
of action through the definite flbro-cellular arrangement
of the growing or embryonic protoplasm, which fits it
the more readily and completely to reach, control, and
direct all the vital processes of nutrition, growth, and life,
as they become evolved in the life-history of every living
higher animal organism. It thus becomes apparent, and
indeed natural, that this force should reside in, be induced
by, and distributed through, the structure known as the
sympathetic nervous' system, implying that it is the great and
vital function of that system, to be the instrument in the
production and disposal of vital energy or life. All organic,
or merely vegetative and passive, vital processes are there-
fore due to and carried out by the sympathetic system,
without which no life is possible, and with the lapse of
which death ensues and total disintegration.
The sympathetic nervous system as developed in man,
and the systemic nervous system bearing animals, is thus
instrumental in the performance of all organic processes^
including the processes of the genesis, growth, and main-
tenance of the systemic nervous system, so far as its organic
origin and connection are concerned, consequently, the
great physiological operations of alimentation, sanguifica-
tion, circulation, respiration, nutrition, and elimination come
under its control, and are carried out — all things being
favourable — with absolute and automatic (we had almost
said mathematical) precision and completeness. Amid all
442 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
this machinery of life in the vegetable and lower animal
worlds, and in all its vital operations, we do not once see
the necessity for the existence of any other nervous
system, nor does that necessity arise until the conditions
of life and environment so change that, more or less,
" struggle for existence " on the part of the individual
animal or community of animals, takes place, when — the
necessity for locomotion ensuing — a supplementary and
additional nervous system makes itself felt, and compels
the formation, or evolution, of what is called a systemic
nervous system^ and the " introduction into the physio-
logical management of affairs " of the principle of a dual
control.
The material mechanism, or fibro-cellular texture, com-
posing the sympathetic nervous system is, as we have
elsewhere contended, made up of every living cell and
connecting fibre engaged in the vital, or organic, work
of the bodily textures, as distinguished from merely
mechanical work, which is often effected through the
instrumentality of textures which have ceased to perform
actual vital work, but which are still continuous with the
textures so engaged, and used by them as supports, points
of attachment, protection media, and auxiliary agencies
generally. The sympathetic nerve textures, therefore, thus
comprehend every cell, with the fibrous processes uniting
that cell to its neighbouring cell, and the connexus of
such cells and fibrous processes throughout the organically
active whole, and thus necessarily constitute all living
textures, with one exception, viz. the systemic nerve
textures proper, composing the systemic nervous system,
which are made up of neurons or nerve units, each
of which is composed of cell protoplasm, nucleus, and
nucleolus enclosed in a cell wall, continuous from the
dendritic processes of the cell to the outer neurilemmar
environment of the nerve terminals — this cell wall and
its axonal continuation, moreover, being a sympathetic
nervous system product.
These statements involve and seem to justify the further
statement, that there are but two vital formative and life-
sustaining organisms within the individual animal body
on which the whole phenomena composing its living,
LIFE— WHAT IS IT ? 443
working, and self-determining attributes depend, in
which they are inherent, and by which they build up
the organic from the inorganic material with which they
are surrounded, vitalise it, and make it subservient to the
functional necessities of the organised and living body.
These two organisms, the sympathetic and the systemic
nervous systems, have distinct functional roles to per-
form, but are histologically connected, and so co-operate
in carrying on their dual offices, as to accomplish the
one combined vital work. As we have contended that
the systemic nervous system not only innervates but
nourishes the textures with which it is connected, and
in which it terminates, so we would suggest and contend
that, in like manner, the sympathetic nervous system
throughout its entire extent innervates and nourishes every
texture of the body with which it is connected, and in which
it terminates, by extracting from the haemal streams with
which its cells, and what we are entitled from analogy
to call processes, are surrounded, the necessary pabulum
required for the nutrition of these various textures, and
conveying it by what is equivalent to a set of axonal
processes from cell to cell into their substance proper,
for assimilation and integration. This method of nutrition
of the so-called non- nervous or sympathetically innervated
structures of the body presupposes the existence of circu-
latory facilities, for the passage of the nutritive materials
held in suspension by the haemal fluid to the cells in
which it is nutritionally deposited (and where it is kept
shut off from the effete systemic lymph), in the substance
proper of these cell textures. And we have every reason
to believe, basing that belief on all analogies of which we
are aware bearing on the subject, that the principle of
circulation, on the molecular scale, is used to effect the
necessary conveyance and metabolic transference of the
nutritive elements, by the selective and distributive agency
of the cells and their attached " pseudo - dendritic and
axonal " processes.
The principle of vital energy or life, and the pabulum of
the various textures, are thus circulated and supplied to
the various non-nervous textures, by the sympathetic
nervous system, on exactly similar lines to those on
444 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
which they are circulated and supplied by the systemic
nervous system to its related cutaneous and muscular
textures.
Therefore, we conclude that the whole process of nutri-
tion, apart from its purely chemico- physiological or meta-
bolic aspects — which may be said to be moleculo-dynamic,
and really not exceptional — is effected through nerve agency,
acting along the lines of a minutely vascular nervine
organisation, by capillary and osmotic circulation and
molecular disposition and interchange of the elements of
the nutritive pabulum, through the universal cell economy
and related fibrous processes, in virtue of which the per-
manent structures are laid down, or built up, and maintained,
and the residual and detached materials removed.
All these statements do not yet enable us to answer the
question, "What is life?" but they enable us to answer
the question, " When does life begin?" Thus, definite
or specific organic life begins in the individual organism on
the fertilisation of the ovum, and on the mitotic division
or the kariokinetic detachment of a cell fragment ; but life
began when the first molecules of inorganic matter were
imbued with vital energy, or when the long sleep of the
inorganic world of matter was broken by the effulgent
dawn of the coming organic day, and when first the
" living form " struggled into primitive existence to per-
petuate the line of living forms by a process of continuous
evolution and advancement, in the manner and style of
organic design and structure, until completed by the
appearance of the last, and highest form, man himself.
Life, beginning thus with the first vitalisation of inorganic
or non-living matter, has continued, according to scientific
teaching and observation, in one unbroken but diversified
sequence of organic forms, to overspread the earth's crust,
clothing and reclaiming it and fitting it for the abode of
man ; each living unit being preceded by and detached
from its parent unit or units, and reproducing its parental
characteristics, while being moulded by its environment,
to fit it for its advancing, or higher destiny, in the great
work of " evolution " by u survival of the fittest." The
first living form, in a sense, therefore, still lives in its
countless descendants, vegetable and animal, and will
LIFE— WHAT IS IT? 445
continue to do so until the catastrophic annihilation of the
globe, or the cessation of the conditions of life, render its
longer continuance impossible.
The matter of which living tissue is made up may be
said to begin to live, or to take on the characteristics of
living, and organic matter, from its first departure from
the dead and inert condition of the gross alimentary
materials composing the nutritive pabulum, and to be
absolutely alive, when organically integrated or organised,
by any of the structures constituting a living organism or
body. In a degree, and in a sense, therefore, the chyle, the
blood, and the lymph are alive, the two former in pre-
paration for vital incorporation, and the latter in the process
of katabolic release and disorganisation — absolutely complete
life or vitality alone belonging to the at present existent
functionally active tissues, organs, and individual organisms
or bodies.
Life, thus viewed in relation to the individual living
human body, is, strictly speaking, a relative term, inasmuch
as life begins in the prospective tissue pabulum, culminates
in metabolic incorporation with the living tissue elements,
and declines with the katabolic liberation, circulation, and
outcasting of these elements.
Life, therefore, is a tripartite, but indissolubly united,
transcendental entity, beginning with the vitalisation of
the elements of nutrition, culminating in their organic
incorporation, and ending with their devitalisation and
elimination. What it in essence is, however, we confess
our inability to realise, and are fain to accept, in pure faith,
the truth of its absolute control over the phenomena called
vital, and its imperishable existence, as a world's motive
force and fashioner of living forms, since its creation till
now and for ever, in the same way as we are intellectually
compelled to accept the truths and the conclusions of
revelation itself.
The life of, and in, the individual man begins in uni-
cellular fashion, progresses along multi-cellular lines, cul-
minates in sustained structural and organic activity, and
declines somatically and molecularly, when, by its dynamic
indestructibility, it emerges from its erstwhile material
medium of existence unaffected — so far as science can offer
446 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
an opinion — and capable of maintaining a dynamic existence
in perpetuity.
The matter of which the body of man is composed is
thus first innervated, or vitalised by, the commingled -parental
energies^ which blend in the innervation of the primordial
cell, and the poly-cellular sympathetic nervine area, absolutely
coalesce in the systemically innervated organism, and finally
vacate its crumbling textures, to pursue a separate existence
and destiny, freed from material entanglement.
The materio-dynamic basis of his being is thus inherited,
it may be, from the first created organic unit by, or in
virtue of, a long sustained and regularly improved estate,
and the continued devolution, from generation to genera-
tion, of transmitted organic increment, he only taking from
his environment the material and energy to maintain the
bond of union during his " lifetime."
The material he inherits in the primordial cell is, or has
been, already vitalised, but the material on and by which
he lives he vitalises himself, in virtue of being endowed
and provided for by that inheritance — that material being
gradually vivified by subjection to the processes of nutri-
tional preparation, metabolic utilisation, and incorporation,
by his component textures. Man, therefore, is composed
of both dead and living material, inasmuch as until the
elements of his food have been converted into living
protoplasm, and vitally incorporated with his tissues, they
cannot be said to be actually alive, nor can the devitalised
materials resulting from tissue waste be said actually to
live, hence the union of his life or vital force, with his
component material parts, can only be in that narrow inter-
vening area, marking the lines of demarcation between his
not yet alive, and his already dying and dead, structural
elements.
The first step in the conversion of dead into living
matter, and the re-conversion of living matter into dead, is
necessarily a process of loosening, or liquefaction, so com-
plete as to allow of circulation within trophic and atrophic
channels respectively, leading up to, and away from, the
actually living structures, in which the materio-dynamic
conditions are actually those of life, and in which death
gives place to life, and life gives place to death, or the
LIFE— WHAT IS IT? 447
great debatable area of trophic integration and disin-
tegration.
The aqueous element, therefore, in the economy of
alimentation and life is the sine qua non of plasmic change
and trophic utilisation, as well as physiological hygiene —
being at once the vehicle of conveyance and the instrument,
or medium, of exchange in the process of nutrition, thus
marking the complete circulatory patency of the whole
vital area, and its associated non-vital " hinterland," so to
speak.
In lending itself to the accomplishment of these pur-
poses it becomes the basis of every organic fluid in the
body, these fluids being universally derived from and
returning to the liquor sanguinis, to be still further utilised
or finally eliminated.
EXTRACT XL.d.
ON LIFE. WHAT IS IT ?
On still further studying this most cryptic subject we have
become impressed with the idea that life, whatever it is in
essence or reality, operates on matter by the mode of force
or energy known as nervine, and that the dynamics of
vitality consist of, so far as we can prove, or scientifically
imagine, the conversion of nervine into proper vital energy
and the physiological play of that energy on organisable
matter, with the transcendental result of the materio-
dynamic evolution of a living unit, uni-cellular or multi-
cellular, with all that belongs to it characteristic of a specific
and generic living being.
Vital energy, or life, having organised a definite organism,
energises it by the dynamic influence of nervine energy,
along definite lines of materio-dynamic circulation depen-
dent on specific organic arrangements, histological and
anatomical.
Life is, therefore, inseparable from this materio-dynamic
connexus, and is synonymous with its functional operations,
or activities, which, when it ceases to actuate or administer
them, lapse temporarily, or permanently ; temporarily, when
the systemic nervous system is in functional abeyance, and
permanently, when the sympathetic nervous system ceases
to functionate.
It is, thus, made up of nerve energy in union with
organised matter, which it inspires, so to speak, and
vitally administers, in conjunction with that inscrutable,
but absolutely existent and persistent entity, the individual
ego, or self-conscious and reasoning being, or essence — an
ON LIFE. WHAT IS IT? 449
entity equivalent to the " spirit " of theology, and alto-
gether undemonstrable by the most finished and scientific
methods of research, although clear to " the mind's eye,"
and acceptable as an article of scientific faith. Nerve
energy, in actuating the machinery of life, allies itself with,
or actually becomes, muscular energy, operates through
capillary attraction and subtle forms of chemico-physio-
logical affinity, and accomplishes the dynamics of life by
affiliating itself with the physics and chemistry of" organism
in action."
2 F
EXTRACT XLI.a.
ON HUNGER AND THIRST.
These are two expressions that must have been in use
since the origin of articulate speech, and which have a
more or less definite meaning throughout the whole
domain of animated nature, as well as inanimate, for over
large tracts of the globe is it not periodically realised that
the words " the showers that usher in the spring and
cheer the thirsty ground " are true to nature, and that
"earth hunger and thirst" is not a mere "form of
words," but a truthful description of a natural condition ?
The feelings or sensations expressed by them are but too
well known to many of the sons and daughters of Adam,
and cannot be long absent from the experience of any
and every member of the human race. Moreover, they
are the great determining agencies in providing for the
continuance of life in every living creature, spurring it
on to procure the " means of existence " by the assuaging
of their imperative insistence and satisfying their demands.
Do the views expressed in the foregoing pages enable
us to realise their meaning to any further extent than
" the man in the street " is fully conscious of ? We think
they do, and we shall, therefore, attempt to extract some
justification for making the sanguine assertion.
Let us begin with the feeling or sensation of thirst —
first, because of its greater prevalence and more oft-
recurring character, and let us localise the feeling or
sensation, so as to derive as much physiological light as
these views, when focussed on the subject, can shed on it,
in order to perceive, in true perspective, its relationship
ON HUNGER AND THIRST 451
to our organic needs, which it is intended to satisfy. The
feeling or sensation of thirst in the human subject, when
localised, is, in its first or earlier stages, experienced,
broadly speaking, in the fauces, and In its second, or
iater stages, in the whole glosso-pharyngeal area — the
feeling or sensation itself beginning with slight drying of
the natural moisture of the affected mucous surfaces, this
drying, as the thirst increases, assuming the proportions
of complete inspissation of all intra-oral and pharyngeal
moisture, and the closure of every gland exit in the
combined cavity of the mouth and pharynx. Why is
this feeling or sensation of thirst confined to this anatomi-
cal area ? And can there be anatomical reasons for it ?
To the latter question we simply answer "yes." To
the former we shall essay to give our answer in some
detail. The region, or regions, affected by thirst, as thus
described, coincide exactly with the areas through which
escape the secretions of the pituitary body and the
salivary glands, and, therefore, compose, or cover, the
scene of the first stage of the prolonged process of pan-
intestinal digestion. The necessity for the continuous
presence of moisture here, or, in its absence, thirst, there-
fore, becomes intelligible when we realise that the escape
of pituitary matter is only possible in the presence of a
liquefying agent, such as saliva, and that the patency of
the pituitary canals, and the lacunal inter-spaces of the
tonsillo-glossal area through which it escapes, can only be
maintained by the existence of open exits, providing for
the free discharge of intra-cephalic debris after it has
passed through the pituitary body — this necessity becom-
ing of no less than vital importance when the effete
products of brain waste, as they enter the third ventricle,
cannot find an escape by the central organs of cephalic
drainage and cerebral hygiene, and when, accumulating,
they inundate the related cerebral intra-spaces, and com-
municating cerebral extra-spaces, to the physical detri-
ment and functional disturbance of the whole systemic
nervature.
The feeling or sensation of thirst may thus be said to
arise from the curtailment of the freedom of excretory
circulation from the central areas of the brain, and
452 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
necessarily that of all the related circulations, primary
and secondary, neural and haemal, preceding that final
circulatory act of cerebral residuum disposal. Thirst,
therefore, primarily concerns the systemic nervous system,
and is a " cry," or warning, from that system particularly,
as it were, that the indispensable element of moisture
must at once be supplied by the responsible agencies if
the continuance of systemic nervine activity, and all that
that implies, is to continue without jar or friction, and
the unimpeded " work of life," organic and personal, to
go forward with comfort and pleasure.
While, as we have said, the systemic nervature thus
gives the initial conscious warning — deducible from the
first, it may be, somewhat vague sympathetico-systemic
local suggestions of the necessity of increased moisture
in the body generally — to the sensorium, we must not
ignore the more general, and it may be still more vague,
suggestions due to general or local promptings of the
sympathetic nervature, pure and simple, in its supervision
of the organic work of nutrition, and all the related
circulatory phenomena and processes communicated along
its " rami cornmunicantes" to the systemic nervature,
and thence to the central and directing consciousness and
responsible and responsive intelligence.
This feeling or sensation called thirst is, therefore,
localised in the glosso-pharyngeal mucosa by the existence
of anatomical and histological continuity or sequence of
textural elements, uniting the central nervous system to
the buccal cavity, and the co-existence of physiological
conditions, which focus themselves in the mucosa of that
region, and which give an almost articulate expression
or language to the set of conditions regulating the supply
of the liquid element to the formative or organic
machinery of the body, which, if interpreted aright,
results in the production of the happiest consequences,
but which, if misinterpreted or wilfully misread, may
result in the most disastrous manner, and with the direst
consequences.
The local association of the feeling of thirst, and the
sense of taste, implied in their respective anatomical dis-
tributions, indicates that the localisation of the former has
ON HUNGER AND THIRST 453
eventuated by natural selection, and been determined with
the intention that its gratification might always be safe-
guarded by at least the local presence and supervision of
one special sense, and that that sense, moreover, should
be specially adapted to meet the special wants necessitated
by such a situation.
The feeling of thirst is, thus, an index of liquid
requirements, exercised physiologically on behalf of local
and general systemic and sympathetic needs, and a regu-
lator of the quantity and quality of the liquid, as well as
the manner and method of its supply ; hence the necessity
for understanding aright, and following at all times its
true meanings and purposes.
Hunger, in like manner, primarily manifests itself
locally, and secondarily more generally and indefinitely ;
locally it is experienced in the gastric region as a feeling
of regional vacuity or more or less vague faintness, or
" a gnawing void," and a more or less pronounced craving
for food, while generally there may synchronise with this
a feeling of declining tone and strength. Is this feeling,
like the feeling of thirst, localised by anatomical and func-
tional conditions ? We think so. Why ? Because it
occurs at the seat of the first great digestive procedure,
and is usually realised when the contents of the stomach
have been removed by absorption, or passed into the
small intestine, at which time the gastric juice is allowed
to impress the gastric wall, and the nervature distributed
therein, and so to indicate that, for the time being, gastric
digestion has been completed, and that there is a coming
necessity for the renewal of digestive material for the
satisfaction of the feeling. This feeling may be regarded
as of the greatest functional value in the economy of
nutrition and organic or formative activity, inasmuch as
it affords an index of the nature and quantity of the
required ingesta, and then ceases to send its messages of
demand as soon as its requirements are met and security
for the continuity of the nutritive process maintained.
Thus, like thirst, hunger may be regarded as a cry,
or warning, to the economy that solid matter or food is
required for organic purposes if the processes of life are
to continue. It may, therefore, be understood as largely
454 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
emanating from sympathetic sources, and an expression of
material voids or vacancies in the molecular condition of
its organic elements and textures.
Hunger and thirst may thus be regarded as sentinels
at the portals of the sympathetic and systemic nervous
systems respectively, giving warning of the necessity of
the neuronal communities and dependencies within to the
guiding instincts and reason of the central nervature, and
superintending the supply and distribution of organic
pabulum to its required destinations.
EXTRACT XLI.b.
ON "FOOD AND DRINK."
Food and drink, in a sense, may be described as the
raison d^etre of organic existence, alike in the vegetable and
the animal worlds, between which, in these matters, a
process of give and take exists on every hand, the balance
of advantage resting with the one or the other according
to the laws of battle^ which are not always in favour of
the " swift " or the " strong," but which, on all occasions,
may be said to eventuate, in the long run, in the survival
of the fittest by " natural selection," in agreement with
the dictates of u evolution," character of " environment,"
and hereditary advantages. The want of food and drink
isfelty and sensibly, or insensibly, realised by every organic
unit, and must be satisfied before that unit can have any
satisfaction in life — life, in this sense, consisting of a
struggle for food and drink in order that it may survive
and perpetuate itself. In the obtaining of food and drink,
the life-work of man is mainly spent, and the manifold
industries and commercial enterprises of the world are
endlessly maintained by his daily recurring absolute needs
and his acquired tastes — the character of the needs may,
hence, vary with the passage of time and the prevailing
tastes, but their satisfaction is rigorously enforced with
unerring feeling or instinct, which, if properly appeased, is
followed by the best results ; but which, if met with wrong
devices, must be followed with corresponding results.
Food and drink, or the solids and liquids of everyday
sustenance, enter the body by a common orifice, become
intimately mixed and blended, so as to afford a common
456 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
element for the gastro-intestinal absorbents to work upon,
this common digestive element being known as chyme
and chyle, according to the stage of digestion reached, and
the amount of chemico-physical change undergone. After
its absorption, we may take it that the process of organic
assortment is in full operation, every step of it being
marked by a chemico-physiological elemental change and
organic evolution, resulting in sanguification, structural
deposition, and complete organisation, after which, by
inverse, or disorganic processes, the removal of the worn
and waste products of organisation is effected in perfect
order, and with vital regularity.
A form of consistency, solid or liquid, is consistently
and consecutively maintained throughout the whole intra-
corporeal circulation of each of the food elements, one
or other of which may be experienced by each of them, as
they become utilised for organic purposes, or ultimately
detached for excretion. Solid and liquid represent the
consistency of the various new elements constituting the
ingesta, the various organic textures, or substances, repre-
senting the formed organic constituents of the living
organism, or the body ; and the various residual substances,
sold and liquid, eliminated from the ingesta and the egesta,
exactly balancing each other in physical weight, but
altered chemical proportion. It, therefore, follows that,
any departure from this condition of physical exactitude,
must be obviated, else a condition of pathological disturb-
ance must result in proportion to the amount of departure
from the physiological standard.
In order that that standard, the physiological, should be
maintained, the quantity and quality of the ingesta must
be rigorously meted out by the presiding physiological
regulators, which here are called appetites, and are known
by the names of hunger and thirst, the first of which
is responsible for the regulation of the solid ingesta, and
the latter for that of the liquid ; both, however, being
subject, in the human species, to the oversight of reason
and accumulated experience, acquired and inherited.
EXTRACT XLII.
ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL NATURE AND IMPORT OF
THE ACTIONS OF YAWNING, STRETCHING, AND
SNEEZING, ETC.
Yawning, explained by the lexicographer, " is the act
of opening the mouth from drowsiness," and so it has
been shortly described since the English language was
evolved from its original elements. No doubt, if we
could penetrate the mists that surround the early history
of our race, we could get glimpses of the fact that it
has always held a place in the list of human enjoyments and
sorrows, and we can plainly see it amongst our domestic
friends, both canine and feline, and in the various grades
of our nearer relatives, the quadrumana.
We thus observe that it is one of the most widespread,
and, at the same time it may be said, one of the least
heeded of our everyday, oft-repeated, involuntary, or
automatic acts.
The act, when patiently analysed, is found to be a very
elaborate and complex one.
The complete and unmitigated yawn may be described
as follows : First the disposition to yawn becomes over-
powering, then the chest is completely filled by a deep
inspiration, the mouth is opened to its full extent, and
(when not combined with the general act of u stretching ")
the muscles effecting these movements are relaxed quickly,
or more slowly, which event is at once followed by the
more or less vigorous contraction of the opposing sets
of muscles, with the result that the various local gland
structures, but mainly the lachrymal, tonsillar, and salivary,
458 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and their vascular and circulatory textures, are mechanically
compressed, and partially emptied, the " tears then spring-
ing into the eyes," and down into the nostrils, and the
saliva " welling" into the mouth.
This act then becomes in our estimation^ when viewed
in the light of its probable functional value, one of the
very greatest importance in its relation to our physical,
and, it may be to some extent, to our mental comfort and
well-being. And here, perhaps, it may be well to express
our surmise that there is a difference in nature and
intensity between the night and the morning yawns, the
former preceding and ushering in sleeps and the latter
completing the act of awakenings and that, in a manner,
the yawn acts as a switch in the economy of inhibition.
When exhausted, wearied, bored, or suffering from
ennui, and sorely needing rest, the handle, so to speak,
of the inhibitory mechanism is seized by the needful
yawn, and held, until finally it falls from its grasp, as
sleep asserts its sway. After which, sleep's sway is
enjoyed for a season, or until nature's requirements
have been met, when the act of awaking once more
instigates the yawn to " turn the inhibitor," and the
more vigorously its powers are exerted the more, in
proportion, is felt the "sense of refreshment" from
the preceding slumbers ; when again the eyes are bathed
with lubricating moisture the nostrils are flushed with
the superabundant lachrymal flood, and the mouth and
fauces are irrigated by the expressed saliva, and tonsillo-
pharyngeal mucoid excretion. Thus the machinery of
at least three of the senses — sight, smell, and taste, and
probably hearing and touch — is refitted for the comfortable
and more efficient performance of duty. Therefore, we
say, let the yawn have complete local and general control
when the exigencies of etiquette will allow, and if these
latter forbid, then the very first opportunity should be
seized of gratifying waiting nature. We refrain, however,
at present from entering on the subject of the therapeutic
value of this essential and natural acty and the description
of a regulated system of yawning and stretching exercises —
the elaboration of which should be fraught with great
physiological benefits.
YAWNING AND SNEEZING 459
The act of stretching may be called the completion
•of the act of yawning above described. It is equally,
or even more generally, apparent throughout the upper
regions of animal life, and is indulged in with an inspiring
air of satisfaction and energy, which, in many instances,
is followed by an evident improvement in morale and
physique alike of its subject.
A deeper inspiration and a consequently full thorax
are again, as in the yawn, the starting-points of the
series of movements which constitute " the stretch."
With the deep inspiration the arm, or arms, are raised
to various heights and angles, turned and twisted, the
neck, with the head, is pulled backwards until its
anterior muscles are put well on the stretch, when an
undulatory movement of the muscles of the trunk,
from top to bottom, sends a wave of curvature down
the spinal column, which loses itself in the lower limbs,
and is projected, alternately flexing and extending them,
to their farthest extremities — these movements sometimes
repeating themselves again and again.
On a patient analysis of the phenomena, constituting
an " act of stretching," it is seen that the first " motor
impulse," after the initial deep inspiration, is communi-
cated to the " extensor musculature," which responds by
inducing an almost simultaneous or immediately consecutive
.contraction^ by which the dorsal aspect of the body is
shortened and the posterior surfaces of the limbs
tightened, throwing the weight of the body, if recum-
bent, on to the occiput and heels. This contraction,
after continuing one or more seconds, relaxes, and is
succeeded by a second " motor impulse," which is com-
municated to the "flexor musculature," and the ventral
aspect of the body and limbs, whereby the body and
limbs are made to form an arc of a circle by bending
forward the head and thorax and tilting upwards the
feet and toes.
These impulses, and consequent muscular contractions,
when well marked, are sufficient to bend the body in
either or both directions, and even laterally, by a slight
alteration and addition to muscular action, to an angle
of from ten to fifteen degrees, and are continued in
460 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
rhythmic succession and gradually declining intensity until
the condition of rest is ultimately regained.
So rhythmic and continued is the act sometimes, that
a see-saw feeling is experienced throughout the body for
a period of time, very much akin to what the unseasoned
sailor is familiar with on regaining terra firma after a
voyage on the " briny deep."
Who then can doubt the importance of this act, or
series of actions, in the economy of a complex organism
like a living vertebrate animal ?
It slows the pulse considerably, lessens the number of
the respirations, and is succeeded by a feeling of oscillatory
movement, which lasts for some seconds, or until the
function of respiration is fully resumed.
The muscular system is thus like a stringed instrument,
" attuned " to the proper performance of its duties, the
motor and sensory nerve trunks are straightened out,
so that nerve impulses can travel to and fro without
interruption, the slow and unapparent lymphatics receive
a stimulus, mechanical and vital, which expedites their
circulation, while the interstitial cellular tissues are, more
or less, unloaded of their passive contents, and the blood
circulation, although slower^ strengthened and steadied.
Moreover, it further seems to us, that the whole liquid
contents of the nerve structures sustain a push, by which
their position is, more or less, changed within their
enclosing sheaths, and their regular distribution improved
or more completely obtained.
" Sneezing " * is one of the same class of acts as
1 On June 29th, 1899, we wrote to the Editor of the British Medical
Journal, as follows : Dear Sir, — A medical friend of mine, who is
acquainted with some work I have done during the last twenty years
in certain departments of neurology, has drawn my attention to a
"Literary Note" which appeared on page 1552 of your issue of the
24th inst., and which reads as follows : " A work by Dr. St. Clair
Thomson entitled ' The Cerebro-Spinal Fluid, its Spontaneous Escape
from the Nose,' is in the Press. The book will be published by Messrs.
Cassell & Co.,;
Before the publication of the work above referred to becomes, or is
accomplished, my friend thinks, and I agree with him, that it is necessary
for me to ask you to be good enough to allow to appear in your earliest
available issue the following extract from a paper entitled : " On the
Physiological Nature and Import of the Actions of Yawning, Stretching,.
YAWNING AND SNEEZING 461
yawning and stretching, and is not infrequently associated
with them. The stimulus to the act of sneezing is usually
felt within the nasal cavities, and may be produced by the
presence of an irritating particle, or as a reflex stimulus
from the optic organs, such as is produced by " looking
at the sun," and, as it seems to us, from a distension of
the Schneiderian membrane, due to a vis a tergo, exercised
by pressure from, superabundant cerebro-spinal fluid, such
as occurs in the course of a " cold in the head."
However caused, the act of sneezing consists in filling
the chest for a supreme effort to clear the nasal cavities of
the offending influence. The act in itself is often experi-
enced as a great relief, sometimes, however, it is attended
with rather painful feelings, and may assume a pathological
character. In the sneezing ushering in a cold in the head,
it sometimes at once unlocks the cerebro-spinal spaces,
relieving them of their pent-up contents, in the shape often
of copious streams of clear, somewhat saline fluid. This
occurrence being so frequently attended by appreciable
lightening of the sense of weight in the frontal region, and,
it may be, by disappearance of the pain experienced in
such ailments as gravedo, coryza, etc., may thus be regarded
as a natural curative agent.
In the light of the preceding remarks we would conclude
that the nostrils are two of the natural outlets or channels
by which the overplus of cerebro-spinal fluid is run off
Sneezing, etc.," which I read to a company of professional gentle-
men in the beginning of the year 1895, and which, along with much
more matter of a kindred character, is now awaiting publication in serial
■or book form. Sneezing is one of the same class of acts as yawning and
stretching, and is not infrequently associated with them. The stimulus
to the act of sneezing is usually felt within the nasal cavities, and may
be produced by the presence of an irritating particle, or as a reflex
stimulus from the optic organs, such as is produced by " looking at the
sun," and, as it seems to us, from a distension of the Schneiderian
membrane due to a vis a tergo exercised by pressure from superabundant
cerebro-spinal fluid, such as occurs in the course of " a cold in the
head," etc.
Dr. St. Clair Thomson's work appeared in due time, and proved to
be a most exhaustive description and recapitulation of every published
•case of what constitutes a pathological demonstration of the physiological con-
dition, to which the above quotation is related, and which is elsewhere
in this work with much more detail described, along with its factors and
the associated cerebro-spinal outlets and excretory phenomena.
462 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
when superabundant, and that the many openings, or
foramina, piercing the ethmoid bone are fulfilling the
great purpose of regulating the quantity of fluid within
the cerebro-spinal cavity, of maintaining the equilibrium of
intra-cranial and intra-spinal pressure, and of thus securing
the integrity of the important structures contained therein —
the process of osmosis, with capillary circulation, being
utilised to effect the purpose.
Generally, or at any rate often, a feeling or sensation is
experienced in the central nasal region for a more or less
brief period, and of more or less intensity, preceding the
act of sneezing. This feeling is excited by each and all
the stimuli or irritant influences capable of causing the
sneeze. But when a " cold in the head " is being caught,
it seems due to the operation or influence of a vis a tergo
pushing the contents of the olfactory apparatus through
its neuro-capillary or terminal fibres.
In controlling this outlet from the cerebro-spinal cavity,
and acting as so many sphincters, so to speak, it appears to
us that an agency is provided in the muscular fibres distri-
buted within the structure of the Schneiderian membrane.
The presence of these muscular fibres in the substance
of this membrane is difficult to explain, unless we concede
to them some such function, when, if we do so, their
presence at once becomes a part of a great plan, and is
recognised as a wonderful provision. We, therefore,
contend that they are, and act as, a series of sphincters, to
regulate the flow of the outpouring cerebro-spinal fluid,
and also that they act as guards against the entrance of
foreign particles from without. Hence the difficulty of
entrance through these channels of any except the smallest
of disease germs known to science, such as the influenzal,
but where an exit is allowed, however small, there must of
anatomical necessity be an entrance correspondingly small.
Hence, also, the possibility of the entrance of such
minute organisms into the cerebro-spinal cavity by the
other channels numerable in this connection, viz. the pitui-
tary apparatus, the coccygeal mechanism, and the sweat
glands generally.
The removal of offending particles from the surfaces
of the nasal passages, for which an act of sneezing has
YAWNING AND SNEEZING 463
been called, is effected by a jet, or whirlpool, of air set in
motion by the expulsatory action of the respiratory muscles
primarily, and by the oozing of cerebro-spinal fluid through
the Schneiderian mucosa, due to the opening of the glands
of Bowman secondarily. Thus, they are either blown away
or washed away.
The new-born infant very early, or, in many cases,
immediately after breathing, gives evidence that the peri-
pheral nerves have become disturbed or affected — through
the change of temperature of the medium by which it
is environed — by an effort, or succession of efforts, at
sneezing. Thus, the changed circumstances of the child's
existence necessitate an easily available provision for the
regulation of intra-cranial and intra-spinal pressure — the
equable temperature of its hitherto immediate surroundings
having been such that the cutaneous surface and other
convenient channels have been sufficient to afford the
required means — whereas now the constantly changing
temperature of the surrounding air, into which it has been
born, is so " trying " for its peripheral nerve terminals
that a correspondingly increased provision of protective
mechanism has had to be secured to prevent disaster.
The sigh may be called an echo of the stretch, and is often
attended by the proverbial relief.
Weeping belongs to the same category of, more or less,
involuntary actions, and is only seen in human beings^
although in one or two instances it may be said to be
closely counterfeited, such as in the case of the proverbial
<c crocodile's tears," and certain howls of the dog and its
congener the hyena.
The whole of these natural movements, and combinations
of natural movements, seem to be the outcome of " natural
demands" and are the finished methods by which nature
effects needful changes in the static conditions of the fluids
of the body, and secures the equilibrium both of the
material and dynamic conditions of it generally, and of the
various organs and structures of it particularly.
This exhaustive study, therefore, cannot fail in enabling
us to possess ourselves of a great natural means of meeting
natural systemic needs by natural systemic methods, in
natural systemic manner.
464 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Further, in an act of sneezing we perceive that the
stimulus — whatever it be — if it be sufficiently strong to
determine the act (because it may be abortive, which often
happens) produces reflexly a closure or narrowing of the
pharyngeo-laryngeal spaces or passages by a contraction of
their encircling musculature, followed by a violent expira-
tory effort, with the effect that the expired air is made to
project into, and sweep through or traverse, the nasal
cavities, removing the cause of offence, or intensifying the
initial irritation. Two sets of muscles are thus brought
into action, viz. those that cause contraction of the upper
part of the respiratory tract, and those that produce a
violent act of expiration, the contraction of the former
being overcome by that of the latter.
Along with the series of events occurring in an act of this
kind in the naso-thoracic regions, we find that a wide-
spreading disturbing influence is produced which makes
itself/*?// to the remotest extremities of the body, but
necessarily where its contents are most liquid, hence the
fluid contents of the cerebro-spinal spaces and inter-spaces,
amongst the others, are more or less violently set in
motion towards the periphery of their combined area or
extent, or particularly along the most yielding channels
connected therewith, two of which, in particular, are the
■olfactory tracts, with their attached nerve endings.
EXTRACT XLIII.
ON THE NATURE OF BLUSHING, FLUSHING, AND
BLANCHING OF THE HUMAN "CHEEK" AND SKIN.
The terms here enumerated are as "old as the hills," and
are as familiar to every white man and woman as the " air
they breathe " or " the raiment they put on " ; besides, have
they not given employment to the pen of the poet and the
brush of the painter since inspiration stirred the intellect
of genius ? And do they not still constitute a theme for
thought, and afford scope for the use of language at once
picturesque and intense ? Into this department of the
" overwhelmingly interesting " subject it would, however,
be nothing short of sheer sacrilege to enter ; we, therefore,
take up, as more germane and relevant to a strictly scientific
treatment of such a physiological problem, the anatomical
and histological lines along which we think there is a
prospect of arriving at more or less definite conclusions
regarding it.
We have elsewhere endeavoured to point out that there
reside in the skin of the body generally, but par excellence
in the skin of the hands and face, a dual vasculature,
engaged in circulating fluids of very different character and
colours, and that these vasculatures maintain their varying
patency by virtue of their connection, and continuity with,
and of their receiving their contents in different manners
from, their respective " fonts of supply " — their raison d'etre^
indeed, being the transmission, or circulation, of the
hasmal and neural fluids.
Of course, it should be mentioned here, for the sake of
histological reality, that a third vasculature exists, viz. the
2 G
466 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
lymphatic, but that it does not enter into the causation, or
regulation, of the phenomena in question, its presence only
becoming known in connection with certain pathological
conditions in particular.
These vasculatures, being the capillary blood-vessels, and
the nerve terminals of the skin, and, consequently, circu-
lating blood and cerebro-spinal fluid plus neural plasma,
respectively, necessarily colour the skin through which they
are conveying their contents, strictly in accordance with the
proportions in which, for the time being, the two fluids are
circulating. Thus, for example, under the stress of severe
or sustained bodily exercise, it will be found that the blood
contents of the capillary vessels, continuously pumped
hither, at last superabound and overshadow those of the
nerve terminal vasculature ; hence the flushing, hence, also,
the blushing of shame or remorse, when the heart, violently
agitated, projects its contents into these tell-tale regions,
and measures out, with more or less fidelity, its depth and
character ; hence, also, the blush which mantles the " cheek
of innocence,'' through the influence, it may be, only or
merely of a " shade of thought," and the quick response of
a cardiac organism attuned to neural impulses and cerebro-
cardiac sympathies. Thus also, under the influence of
shock, fear, or " intense feeling " of various kinds, we may
witness the counterpart to these haemal displays in the
temporary, and, alas ! sometimes the permanent, arrest and
withdrawal of the circulating blood from the blanching
cheek, and the intensification of the natural pallor by
stronger and fuller invasion of the neuro-terminal vascula-
ture by the pale and colourless elements of the cerebro-
spinal lymph streams and the pearly nerve plasm, with the
final disappearance of every vestige of colour, as the pall of
unconsciousness falls over the thousand-fold activities of
the sensorium, and " life in death," or death itself completes
the scene.
In trying to appreciate the phenomena of the flush, the
blush, and the blanch, we must bear in mind that in doing
so we are looking upon a histological collection of micro-
scopic vessels of varying lumen, conveying differently
coloured and shaded fluids, actuated by a dynamic organ-
ism, sensitive to the slightest influence flowing from its
BLUSHING AND BLANCHING 467
environment from within or from without, and above all,
initiated and determined by the most transcendental of
human attributes, viz. human consciousness and emotion ;
we must further bear in mind that the whole mechanism,
material and dynamic, concerned in the formation and
expression of these phenomena is but an instrument for
the recording of characteristics which may be " known
and read of all men," an instrument, moreover, that can be
" played upon," and can " emit a music," ranging in height
and depth of tone and quality within limits as wide as
those of the human race.
A rhythm and play, moreover, characterise their occur-
rence, which sound to the very depths the seas of human
happiness and sorrow, and which lend a halo of romance
to even the commonest life, when viewed in its relation-
ships to all that is noblest and best, and all that is coarsest
and worst in the great human cosmos.
Pleasure may be seen depicted in the least expected
quarters, and pain and suffering where they were not
suspected to have obtained a footing ; yea, here can often
be read the truth of the oft-repeated saying, in the calm-
ness and imperturbability of right thinking, saying, and
doing, that " virtue is its own reward."
Flushing and blushing are due to increased blood pres-
sure throughout certain generally well-defined areas of
capillary circulation, while blanching is due to retarded, or
abolished capillary circulation plus, most probably, increased
neuro-terminal circulation, with culminating stasis, as the
condition assumes the character of permanency. At a
glance it will be seen that the opposed states of flushing
and blushing and of blanching cannot possibly co-exist,
inasmuch as they are the outcome of diametrically opposed
conditions, flowing out of the involvement of two differently
constituted vasculatures, and the existence of two diffe-
rently coloured circulatory fluids, and that they must, or do,
fluctuate in the order of their occurrence and continuance.
Moreover, a distinct value attaches to the power of being
able clinically to read the nature and meaning of any
departure from their normal form of occurrence, or any
perversion of nature's methods of showing on the surface
the method of the more deep-seated working of the
468 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
machinery within, and of the indications presented as to
measures of rectification. A profound contrast must here
be recognised as separating the two different sets of funda-
mental conditions, viz. the haemal and the neural, and
determining the character of contingencies, diagnostic and
therapeutic. In dealing with many of the more ordinary
dermatological problems, the clinical use of the above
observations may also claim some value.
The degree of intensity to which the phenomena of
blushing, flushing and blanching may at any time reach is,
no doubt, regulated by vaso-motor innervation, so far as it
is the outcome of haemal circulation, but the profundity of
the degree to which blanching may reach may be regarded
as the outcome of accentuation of neuronic circulation
within the neural vasculature and stasis, or it may be
increased flow of the neural fluids within the nerve
terminals of the parts involved. Circulation thus, once
more, becomes the key to unlock the problems involved
in the natural phenomena of blushing, flushing, and blanch-
ing of the skin of the cheek and of the general cutaneous
surface, and illustrates again the truth which we have so
often repeated : circulatio circulationum, omnia circulatio.
The phenomenon of diaphoresis is intimately associated,
on many occasions, with the phenomena of blushing, flush-
ing, and blanching, so much so indeed that a clue is
afforded to the explanation of the sequence of the physio-
logical events which make them up ; thus, the flushing of
violent exercise throws on the sudorific exits more material
than can be passed through them in their usual or normal
condition, hence we have sudoral accumulation and
hindered haemal circulation, culminating in more or less
pronounced stasis and rubicundity of surface, while
blanching, as a contrast, may be attended with the most
profuse diaphoresis.
EXTRACT XLIV.a.
ON METAMORPHISM.
Metamorphism, or the process of metamorphosis of
tissue materials, is observed in the evolution and growth
of all vital organisms, as well as in the involution and
decadence of these organisms as displayed in post-primal
age or the " decline of life."
Metamorphoses of tissue formation and, in many cases,
of external form, are so numerous and apparent, and have
been so exhaustively treated and elucidated by the botanist
and zoologist throughout the two kingdoms of animated
nature, that it seems unnecessary to do more than call the
attention of those interested in the subject, in so far as it
relates to their peculiar departments of science, in order
that the evolutionary processes of metamorphism may be
utilised to explain and illustrate the converse, or reverse,
involutionary processes of metamorphism undergone by
vital textures in their period of decline and devitalisation
or resolution.
Evolutionary metamorphosis, as here implied, may be
shortly described as a process of change from a lower to a
higher form of structural arrangement and functional role,
whereby a stage of stable and perfect formative attainment
is ultimately reached by the organism in its various parts
and textures where, and in which condition, it continues
for a variable period according to the nature of the
organism, when, or after which, a process of decline or
involution sets in, and lasts till the vital cohesion of its
component structural parts can no longer be maintained,
and death ensues as the inevitable consequence. These
470 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
changes constitute the life history of the organism whatever
it may be, and afford an index of the age, or stage, of
development to which it may have reached, and, therefore,
the probable length of time it may yet have to live, the
clear apprehension of which, consequently, sometimes
becomes a matter of great moment under certain circum-
stances. The sequence of the steps, or stages, of evolu-
tionary metamorphosis, we think we are warranted in
concluding, must bear a somewhat definite relationship to
those of involutionary metamorphosis, and, we further
think, generally in the manner of inverse order of sequence
or occurrence. Thus, the muscular strength in the case
of men and the higher animals, as it is the last of the
physical attainments to be perfected, begins to fail first,
usually while the cutaneous covering and appendages —
pigmentation included — begin to show almost simultaneous
signs of involutionary change, or decay, both occurrences
being dependent, according to our belief, on failing
nutrition, due to lessening of their nervine pabulum,
which most likely is retained, or diverted, to some extent
at least, for increased or intensified purely cerebral or
intellectual work. Thus, the commencing and the growing
enfeeblement of the muscular tissues, the falling off and
whitening of the hair and the wrinkling of the skin, which
herald the advent of the decline of life, all belong to, and
are induced by, the failure, or diminution, of the supply of
the nerve plasmas used by these structures, which are
conveyed to them by, or through, the nerve terminal
channels of the afferent and efferent nervatures, from the
cerebral, spinal, and ganglionic nerve cells respectively —
the rounded outlines, plump features, and ruddy health
of youth and primal manhood merging into coming age,
and disappearing with the gradual progress of decay and
degeneration, leaving only an organic wreck behind.
Involutionary metamorphosis, as thus begun and ex-
emplified in the muscular and cutaneous textures, pursues
its degenerative course through the whole series of
structural and visceral elements composing the organism,
laying hold of one after another very much in the order
of their original development, or on lines dictated by
their respective powers of resistance, and their degree of
ON METAMORPHISM 471
perfection of original formation and preservation of healthy
characteristics — the vital powers, as exercised by the
systemic and sympathetic nervatures, succumbing seriatim
to the cumulative influence of chemico-physiological or
pathological change and negation.
In this process of involutionary metamorphosis we may
be prepared to find the beginning of many diseases due to
spontaneous failure of the vital powers to resist the natural
tendency to degeneration and decay, intensified, it may be,
by conditions of life destructive of health operating along
physiological, chemical, bacteriological and other lines, and
dragging the unfortunate subject, it may be, into premature
age and death.
It would not be too much to say, in connection with
these views, that such a disease as cancer may be proved
to have its origin in the pathological, and not in the
physiological, disposal of structures, whose office and
presence in the system are no longer possible, and whose
removal, therefore, has become a functional necessity and
a condition of health to that economy; and that the
proneness to attack by that disease of organs, whose
functional role is curtailed or ended, has herein the ex-
planation of its probable etiology and pathology. The
necessary liability to pathological change of these structures,
and their lessened power of resistance to the incidence and
influence of morbid agencies, render them at all times a
source of danger, amid the tumult and friction and con-
cussions of life, to their possessors, and hence, in dealing
with affections of such a character, we have thus provided
a point of view from which to regard them which may be
fruitful both of diagnostic and practical results. Thus —
par excellence — we observe that the female suffers from
this disease to a greater extent than the male, and just in
connection with organs and structures whose functions
are early closed and ended, viz. the mammary glands and
the uterus and appendages, whose involutionary meta-
morphosis is so wholesale and complete as to outrun, in
many cases, the absorptive and eliminatory powers possessed
by an adynamic and enfeebled organism, and, hence, to
leave a structural residuum peculiarly prone to become
the seat of disease and pathological change ; in this
472 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
condition of things, therefore, we have a nidus in which
spontaneous retrogressive changes are continually in
progress, and what more natural, therefore, than that
these changes should be pathologically hastened by one or
many of those parasitic or bacterial tenants, which, from
time to time, or, it may be, always, are in possession of
the living body for good or ill, and whose eviction, when
evil, it becomes the great necessity of well-directed prophy-
laxis and therapeutics to obtain in the first place, and
surgical measures in the second ? The materies morbi of
cancer, whatever it may be, is a morbid agent or tendency,
or both, which can only become actively harmful when the
individual organism has entered on " the down grade,"
and when its metamorphosing tissues have, consequently,
lost that vitality which alone is able to confer and maintain
their immunity from, or under, attack ; it must thus be
necessary, in order to meet such conditions, that the
greatest heed should be taken in order to anticipate and
forestall the attack of the materies morbi by the maintenance
of as robust a physical condition as can be obtained, and
the withdrawal of all vulnerable metamorphic matter as far
as that can be accomplished. So, we think, it will be
possible, to some extent, to meet that clamant cry and
want of the present time by a rational and, to a certain
extent, scientific adaptation of " means to ends." Those,
therefore, who are approaching the period of decline of
life must be taught the physiological necessity of main-
taining the condition of the general health at its highest
standard in order to promote the " work of nature "
employed in adapting the various structures and organs
of the body to altering structural and functional conditions
in obedience to the laws governing the incidence and
progress of involutionary metamorphosis, and so to raise
the barriers of physiological textural resistance and conse-
quent immunity from the pathological attack of cancerous
and other disease emissaries and enemies.
EXTRACT XLIV. B.
ON MATERIO-DYNAMIC PARALLELISM, OR ORGANIC
CO-EVOLUTION AND -INVOLUTION OF TISSUE,
ORGAN, AND FUNCTION, AS A NORMAL MODE
OF DEVELOPMENT, OR GROWTH AND DECAY.
We take it, as a physiological rule, that the development
of structure, from the embryonic condition to the mature
state, is accompanied by the development, or evolution,
of function, in exact degree and proportion, or, in other
words, that the development of both is parallel or synchronous^
and that when maturity is reached both are characterised
by absolutely normal, or co-ordinate, features and qualities,
enabling their possessor to take a normal place in the
battle of life, and to perpetuate the species, whatever it
may be ; any departure from this rule, therefore, intro-
duces an element of friction, material or dynamic, into
the physiological working and functional output of
texture, organ, or organism, which, if persistent, must
end in the production of a pathological condition or
disease.
We contend that such an occurrence as the loss of this
parallelism may give rise to a condition of disease, pro-
portionate to the intensity and continuance of the cause,
or causes, and becomes an absolutely provable fact, when
we closely observe and consider the sequences of develop-
mental events occurring in the evolution and involution
of certain organs and structures, whose existence is
maintained for a limited period of time in the life of
the organism in which they occur, and whose functional
activity is only temporary, or within more or less brief
474 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
physiological limits ; and for an illustration of this con-
tention, let us take the most prominent and outstanding
example with which we have to deal in the human species,
viz. the child-bearing period, and organs of reproduction,
proper and subsidiary, of the female. The period of
time embraced by the active functional working of these
organs is represented by the years intervening between
the age of puberty and the attainment of the menopause,
and is of variable duration, due to the operation both of
individual and general or climatic causes. During its
continuance, great fluctuations, both in evolutionary and
involutionary change, ensue from the exigencies of mater-
nity— a consequent loss, or lapse, of parallelism preceding
and accompanying them, especially the latter — which is
the cause of many of the gynaecological ailments which
ensue during this period of life, the rectification of which
can best be effected on the lines thus indicated. In this
connection we would observe that it is most remarkable,
however, how often the human female, and more especially
that of the fera nature, performs the function of mater-
nity, with absolute freedom from untoward circumstances,
during any and every period of its duration — so precise
and self-sufficient are the provisions of nature in all their
details, a fact which warrants us in closely copying her
methods and designs and adopting her plans, when called
upon, in the exercise of our profession, to deal with such
matters.
The cessation of the function of reproduction, and
especially the attainment of the menopause, mark a
period when a lapse of involutionary parallelism between
structure and function may, and not infrequently does,
take place, and where the lapse of function is, or may,
for a variable period, be followed by a more or less
appreciable continuance, or survival, of structure. Should
this disparity be considerable in amount or extent, or
long continued, the result will be a pathological condition,
proportionate in extent, continuation, and intensity to the
disparity. This doctrine applies equally to the uterine
and mammary organs and subsidiary textures, and also
applies with peculiar force to the incidence of disease in
all organisms whose developmental history is one of
MATERIO-DYNAMIC PARALLELISM 475
alternate activity and rest, rest and activity, a condition
of things uniquely characteristic of the organisms of
maternity. Thus, these organisms are embryonically and
fcetally developed with the rest of the bodily structures,
and remain functionless, i.e. as to their specific function,
until the age of puberty is reached, when they assume
their functional role, which is characterised by periodic
acute intervals of structural and functional increase and
diminution of evolutionary and ihvolutionary develop-
ment, until, their specific functional activity over, they
resume the condition of the status quo ante. The resump-
tion of this condition, of functional deprivation and organic
rest, constitutes the occasion in the history of the indi-
vidual in which the occurrence of non-parallelism between
structure and function is most likely to occur, and where
delayed material, or organic, involution of functionless
textures is most apt to result in the production, or
establishment, of pathological conditions — conditions
which, if not capable of removal, must necessarily and
inexorably lead to the production of either, or both,
innocent and malignant disease. Here, then, we believe,
we have reached one of those " points of view" in the
evolution of self-originating, or non-conveyed, disease
where the initiation and evolution of cancer can be
observed, and its course seen as it pursues its fell way
along structure and organ, destroying and annihilating
every feature and outline of normal development, and
reducing to one chaotic mass the fair physiological domain
of harmonious proportion and good health.
As the active and specific functional role changes into
that of rest, or stagnation, and disease, the structures,
which have served their " day and generation," are some-
times left to crumble into ruins, while the scavengers and
refuse-removers for the time being are, for some reason
or other, not called upon, or are unable, to remove the
weight of functionless, or useless, debris ; the formative, or
organising, agencies in this pathological crisis take up the
imposed, or sympathetic, role of performing the relin-
quished work, by covering up, ivy-like, the neglected
material remains, by whatever material means may be
at their disposal. This work, therefore, instead of finally
476 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
disposing of, or excreting, the crumbling and effete
materials as they become devitalised, imprisons and
retains them, thereby producing, or allowing to form,
a pathological nidus for " new formations," from which
dead or diseased materials are allowed to leak and well
into the neighbouring functionally active body textures
at large, to the detriment of the health, and finally to the
death of the individual. That this can occur, in indi-
viduals of impaired, or originally low, vital resistance, with
special readiness, is only too evident, and we hold that it
explains the doctrine of the hereditary transmission of
cancer, as well as some other reputed hereditary diseases,
these hereditarily disposed individuals never manifesting
symptoms of such diseases until their organisms become
encumbered with functionless and perishing textures, with
the removal of which their absorbing and excretory
agencies are unable to deal — a feeble power of disease
resistance, and insufficient ability to cope with tissue
waste, being the inherited peculiarities on which these
diseased conditions and pathological sequences of events
depend for their origin and development.
The perishing remains of functionless and katabolic
textures, must, therefore, be regarded as forming the
originating and foundation physiologico-pathological basis,
or matrix, on, and in which, the pathogenic agencies begin
their malign work, and from which they attack and
destroy the neighbouring healthy structures, making them
" part and parcel " of their own malignant developments
and textures ; the nature and structural characteristics of
these developments being necessarily coloured and de-
termined by the organic materials on which they feed,
and from which they are evolved and developed by the
usurping pathological formative agencies and forces — no
doubt dictated, or determined, so to speak, by the formerly
prevailing physiological regime.
The principle and working of the physiologico-pathological
process, or succession, of evolutionary and involutionary
events in the life history of plants and animals alike has
long been observed and studied, and is, or, we may say,
ought to be, now recognised as a universal law, by the
operation of which nature arranges and accomplishes her
MATERIO-DYNAMIC PARALLELISM 477
work of organic succession in tissue, organ, and organism
generally, as well as individually and specially, throughout
the entire field of animated nature. Cancer, originating
thus, may be regarded as an attempt to meet a physiologi-
cal requirement on the part of the formative agencies,
physiological and pathological, inherent in every human
system, at a crisis in the organism where it is met with,
and wherein, instead of levelling down and eliminating,
dead and dying textural materials, these formative agencies
in their transition, or dual regime, level up and imprison
them in their transition condition, with the result that they
become the prey of any wandering pathological parasites,
or phagocytes, which may invade them, thus allowing such
organisms to thrive and propagate and distribute them-
selves throughout every inter-space and cranny into which
they can possibly find an entrance throughout the length
and breadth of the unfortunate individual who may
happen to be their host. It may, therefore, well be that
the modern quest for the microbe of cancer may prove a
rather disappointing one, on account, thus, of the possi-
bility of the existence of a multiplicity of bacillary organ-
isms which may each find congenial work and means
of development and perpetuation in the soil of functionless
and effete structural material, in its processes of physio-
logico-pathological change, and final transitional disposal.
Cancer, consequently, if micro bic in nature, is not neces-
sarily so from its inception, inasmuch as the pre-existence
and persistence of a down-grade metamorphic matrix of
adynamic, or functionless, material is necessary for its
starting-point, along with an initial play of pathological
formative energy on the effete elements before their final
relegation to the powers of disease and death, and their
return to " dust and ashes " ; it behoves us, therefore,
if we would prevent this affection, to obviate such a con-
catenation of disease-permitting conditions, by adopting
such measures as will accomplish their occlusion, or
removal, and by securing the possession of an effective
power of physiological resistance to the incidence of all
such lethal pathological changes, through the use of means
of elimination of sub-involuted and semi-disintegrated
structural materials, and the " ordering into line," or
478 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
parallelism of working, of function and structure generally
as well as specially.
Thus regarded, cancer must be understood as a disease
of the transition state, or an affection which appears in struc-
tures, organs, or systems, whose textural and functional
states are liable to more or less sudden disturbances at
certain stages and phases of life, and when, in consequence,
a non-parallelism, inequality, or disproportion, is apt to
ensue between the hitherto harmoniously dual working
of the physiological elements of structure and function.
Hence, it is met with, more particularly in late, middle, and
advanced periods of life, or when " in the nature of things "
the laying down, or abrogation of function, necessitates,
but is, unfortunately, not always immediately succeeded by,
the removal of the now morbid structure, and the adapta-
tion of the altering means to the altering ends — the but, in
such cases, signifying the pathological " point of departure,"
where disease is liable to take the place of health, and mark-
ing the commencement of that shorter or longer down-
grade progress which characterises the "decline of life"
ere it merges into death, and final inorganic resolution.
The decaying, and, therefore, somewhat septic material,
set free by the cancerous and other breaking down, and
pathological resolution of functionally inert tissue plasma,
invades by circulation the lumen of every vessel — be it
blood, systemic lymph, or neurolymph — and traverses
thereby, more or less, of the whole or related bodily
structures ; moreover, by histological continuity along the
purely fibrous and other quasi-solid elements of the
affected areas, it makes its way in a more circumscribed
and limited manner into the solid matrix of the neighbour-
ing structures and organs.
These views of the genesis of cancer and tissue disease,
or malignant and innocent growths generally, would in-
dicate that the processes of physiological involution merge
insensibly into, and are continuous with, the processes
of pathological evolution ; or, in other words, that an
unbroken process of growth and extension characterises
the ending of the physiological structural regime in that
of the pathological, no absolute or sudden line of de-
marcation being distinguishable between them, the elements
MATERIO-DYNAMIC PARALLELISM 479
of growth and the vital forces involved at such junc-
tures being one and the same, plus the addition of the
modifying and determining morbid causes, or influences,
be they chemical, bacterial, or dynamic and vital, or other.
On analysing these statements for the detection of the
underlying and pervading principle or condition, deter-
mining the inception of the pathological regime, we are
obliged to acknowledge that we can see no other than
that of the occurrence of materio-dynamic non-parallelism,
or non-synchronicity between the removal of structure
and the lapse of function, or the survival of non-
or insufficiently vitalised tissue materials, whose functional
role has been abolished, and whose removal has not been
physiologically effected.
The physiological necessity for the removal of func-
tionless tissues and organs is constantly occurring
throughout the lifetime of the individual from the
earliest embryonic state until the lapse of three score
years and ten, or later ; and if constantly recognised by
nature, and, it may be, aided by art and rigidly effected,
nothing else, so far as this aspect of the occurrences which
shorten life is concerned, can hinder the attainment of
its "allotted span." In explanation, therefore, of the
reported increased prevalence of cancer in late times, we
would advance the opinion that our failure to recognise
the truth of this contention, and to adopt means for its
prevention, or neutralisation, has allowed to occur just
those circumstances which encourage its origin and per-
petuation, and which, if not attended to in the future,
must of necessity still farther add to the price that is paid
for modern civilisation, with its increased labour-saving
inventions, artificial arrest of muscular effort^ and over-
indulgence in luxury. Moreover, we are of opinion that
the adoption of measures of a preventive character, based
on the indications deducible from these views, and used
to supplement and perfect the physiological working of
the natural organic agencies of internal hygiene, will do
much to counteract and neutralise these predisposing
influences and circumstances in their immediate and
remote effects, and to that extent widen the boundaries
of preventive medicine generally.
480 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Internal, or organic hygiene, as we may call it, has been
to a very great extent left to nature, or the vis medicatrix
naturte^ and has had little or no attention bestowed on it
until the failure of its health-preserving provisions have
allowed the intrusion of pathological factors and the
production of disease, when, alas ! it has been too late
to render effective assistance to these overpowered organic
health- preserving agencies and natural hygiene. We
would, therefore, reiterate the great necessity there is for
modern life to be safeguarded by the adoption of a more
rational means of prevention of such diseases as cancer
and allied affections, seeing that curative means so far
have not been so successful in their effects as the supreme
requirements of the situation necessitate and demand.
EXTRACT XLIV.c.
ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESS KNOWN AS
"AGEING," OR INVOLUTION.
We have already " trenched on this ground," but still
think that it requires " turning over," in order that it
may yield "something more of a crop" to repay the
expenses of labour.
" Ageing " is a natural process due to the co-operation
of dynamic and material factors on definite physiological
lines, and characterised by the evolution of a regular
succession of tableaux vivants, or living " tell tales," each
indicating a difference from the other in physical features
and physiological peculiarities sufficient to mark the stage
of development and age attained by its subject in his or
her passage " from the cradle to the grave." The process
thus viewed reveals the great physiological truth that the
limits of life — as represented in the usual experience of
" the longest liver," or where and when senile decay
takes possession of the organism and closes the life scene
by involution — are laid in and constituted respectively by
the two great periods of almost purely systemic nerve
control, and the combined early and late periods of
nervine control actuated by the influence of sympathetic
nervine energy dominant during the almost entire abey-
ance, on the one hand, and final exhaustion, on the other,
of systemic nerve energy.
Between the periods of pre- and post- sympathetic
nerve control in the systemic period of innervation of
the organism, we witness the continuous evolution of
the representative phenomenon of " age " or " ageing "
2 H
482 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
impressing themselves more or less definitely on the
physique^ esprit^ et morale of every descendant of Adam,
and can, by observation and education, qualify ourselves
to pronounce a more or less true and definite opinion
upon the life history of any one of these descendants.
The abstract scientific importance of thus being able to
read life history is very great, and daily becomes greater
as the relationships of " man to man " widen and accumu-
late. It, therefore, becomes necessary that the " funda-
mentals " of the art should be laid on a basement of
exact knowledge of the " subject matter," and a scientific
appreciation of the factors involved, in order that it should
take its place as an accessory instrument for the discovery
of truth and a supplementary instrument for the advance-
ment of civilisation, without suspicion, on the one hand,
and with that warranty which such an instrument and
weapon must possess whenever used in the regulation or
administration of human affairs, on the other.
In examining in some detail these " fundamentals," we
have become aware that the phenomena of " ageing " are
more or less intelligently read and understood, and "acted
upon," not only by uneducated man, but by the whole
animal, and even, to some extent, the whole vegetable
world, and that, therefore, they constitute, in fact, a large
part of the great generalisation known as the " law of
natural selection," as it is revealed to the organic world.
The occurrence of " ageing," as here indicated, may be
described as, in great part, innate, and the production
of heredity, impressed on the succeeding generations of
organic forms, and transmitted with them for purposes of
organic evolution, racial progress, and differentiation. It
thus becomes one of the most universally possessed attributes
of organic life, and consequently an instrument for the
moulding of organic destiny, on the lines of organic
evolution, of the most all-pervading character and nature.
In the human species, with which we are more immediately
concerned, " ageing " lays its hand on every structure and
organ of the body, and every feature and trait of the mind
and character, overrunning and inter-penetrating the very
" weft and woof of life," and maintaining a consistency of
plan, in spite of all the alterations of environment of the
INVOLUTION 483
individual, and the variant combinations of evolutionary
influences to which the individual, as distinguished from
the community, may be subjected. Ageing is thus con-
fined— "all things being equal" — to a finely graduated
range of incidence in every tissue, organ, and texture of the
individual body, and is consistently impressed as to rate,
extent, and conspicuousness on the tout ensemble of that
body as well, so that a regular rhythmic progress, so to
speak, is the result — a result so regularly recurrent and
" plain to behold," as that " he who runneth may read," so
that thereby mankind is saved the trouble and embarrass-
ment of putting direct questions, which have sometimes
both a negative and positive bearing at the time, which it is
usually politic to avoid, and which, moreover, is not
usually required for scientific purposes.
Ageing impresses itself on the whole anatomical elements
of the body, simultaneously making itself felt in and on
these elements, in accordance with the character of their
structure and their altering conditions as to exercise and
nutrition, as the race of life continues to be run, and as
the effects of Cl tear and wear " on them become more and
more felt with the passage of time, the natural clinging to
the body of disengaged material, and the physical cohering
of disintegrated or metabolised material, to the functionally
living and active structures.
Ageing thus viewed covers a very large field of ana-
tomical and physiological physics and dynamics, a field so
large, indeed, that we here can only touch the fringe of it ;
that fringe, however, embodies some account of the intrinsic
changes presented by the skin and subcutaneous textures,
or those personal characteristics more especially " visible
to the naked eye," and, therefore, easy of access to every-
day clinical experience and physiological observation.
The skin and subcutaneous structures are continually
undergoing changes, many of which are so unapparent and
gradual as not to attract attention, and many so instant
and acute as immediately to arrest attention, and become
the theme of interested thought and dialogue between
subject and bystander, and, it may be, to afford a thesis for
physiological consideration and elaboration on the part of
some who, by special training, have had their scientific
484 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
" wits sharpened," and their scientific curiosity aroused to
the requisite degree, to enable them to undertake the
recondite task.
The degrees to which the respective elements of the
skin and subcutaneous tissues are developed, and the pro-
portions in which they are admixed in infantine, adult, and
senile age respectively, constitute the basis on which the
phenomena of ageing are mainly determined, and the
material out of which they are evolved, as " time goes on,"
by the operation of physiological law on anatomical elements
and in anatomical order. Thus, the infantine skin is, or
may be said to be, predominantly haemal in its vascularity,
the skin of adult life to be of a predominant neural vas-
cularity, in which the tactus eruditus is, or can be acquired,
and exercised in perfection, while the skin of the senile is
passively haemal, and retrogressive changes make manifest
the reversal to the haemal type, each conspicuous area of
haemal vascularity remaining in somewhat solitary grandeur
amid the disappearing remains of the neural vasculature.
It should be added that, amid all these vicissitudes of
cutaneous vascular change, the systemic lymph vasculature
undergoes a greater or lesser structural change also, but
not to the extent or in the degree that characterises either
the haemal or neural vasculatures, and, therefore, that it
has not the relative importance as an ageing factor that
belongs to either the haemal or the neural vasculatures,
and may be allowed to lapse from our further enquiries
into the subject, except so far as its temporary passive
attitude in certain pathological conditions is concerned, as,
for instance, in cedema and anasarca. The consistence and
depth of the skin and subcutaneous tissues, together with
the amount of anatomical subjacent packing or padding,
determine, to a great extent, the smoothness or the reverse
of the cutaneous surface, and hence, to a considerable
extent, "stamp" the various stages of the process of
ageing. The earlier periods of life, being characterised by
greater fulness and consistency of these tissues, are devoid
of the wrinkling of the later periods, and hence give to
them that appearance of youthfulness so pleasing to the
eye of the aesthetic, and so fruitful of poetic " inspiration "
in both sexes of the human race, and this is, no doubt,
INVOLUTION 485
fraught with great potentialities for the furtherance of
nature's plans and the accomplishment of nature's work.
Consistence and depth of skin and completeness of
underpacking being chiefly responsible for the regulation
of the incidence of surface ageing, it follows that that
incidence must be determined by the changing proportions
of these elements to each other, and by the altering pro-
portion in anatomical space they occupy with relation to
the deeper-seated structures during the various stages of
the process.
The skin being mainly made up of two vascular
elements, whose circulatory vascular phenomena are entirely
different the one from the other, it behoves us to analyse
to some extent the character of these phenomena, in order
to arrive at more exact and definite ideas than we have
hitherto held with regard to the rationale of external
ageing.
Leaving out, still, the lymphatic circulation of the
structures involved, as not decidedly necessary in the fol-
lowing analysis, we would premise that there are two circu-
lations involved in particular in the process of external
ageing, one haemal and the other neural. The first, or
haemal, is a circulation through an arterial vasculature
ending in a capillary network of intermediate minutely
divided and anastomosing vessels, where the phenomena of
haemal change from arterial into venous takes place, and
where the venous vasculature re-collects, for renewed
arterialisation, the minutely broken up capillary currents.
In this circulation there is no excretion of the haemal
elements into the cuticular textures through which they
pass save those of metabolism, and, consequently, no macro-
scopic deposit in the matrix of the skin, and no material
shedding, which on " setting " can add to its thickening
and consistence, or depth, the circulation being into and
out of the anatomical elements of the skin, with the secured
freedom and hydraulic strength and completeness of an
uninterrupted current, perfected by ubiquitous capillary
vascular anastomoses and open capillary channels. This
circulation, the haemal, we must, therefore, eliminate from
the " possible " agents in the process of ageing, at any rate
in so far as it can be held responsible for the increasing
486 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
consistence and thickening of the skin, and for those
features of cutaneous change evolved by age. Having
thus disposed of haemal circulation as an appreciable genetic
influence in the process of external ageing, we are left with
the neural circulation to account for the physical changes
undergone by the skin, and thus to become the chief
instrument in producing and meting out the specific signs
and memorials of ageing.
The neural circulation, as we elsewhere have described,
is a compound circulation, consisting of, at least, three
distinct circulations, all of which have one feature in com-
mon, viz. that they end in and on the skin, and terminate
by the excretion of their entire circulative materials, accord-
ing to their specific or intrinsic characters as to fluidity,
plasticity, and physical qualities generally ; thus, the neural
lymph circulation terminates immediately in and by the
sweat glandulature as a fluid, or gaseous and evaporable,
material, or excrementitious substance, while the medullary
and the axis cylinder substances of the axons lend them-
selves to the histological increase or growth of the dermal
and epidermal textures, and thereafter to gradual exfolia-
tion, or shedding, as more or less solid exuviae.
The first of these neural circulations, the neural lymph
circulation, may, like the haemal and lymphatic circulation,
also be eliminated from the list of agencies primarily con-
ducive to the process of external ageing, inasmuch as it is
concerned in transmitting through the cutaneous structures
a fluid and non-plastic element, which in a normal or
physiological state leaves no trace behind, but which, in
certain pathological conditions, lends itself to the convey-
ance, in suspension, of morbid elements which may undergo
changes in transit, rendering them, more or less, permanent
ingredients of the dermal and sub-dermal structures, as, for
instance, in certain forms of gout and rheumatism, and
other allied affections.
This elimination of all the local circulatory elements
concerned in the vital work of the skin, with the exception
of the two outstanding neural, or neuro-axonal, circulations,
whose final outfall work, or excretional disposition, consti-
tutes, in great measure, the active functional raison detre of
the skin with its appendages, compels us to adopt the
INVOLUTION 487
opinion that these two neural circulations, the medullary
and axis cylinder, are almost entirely responsible for the
production of external ageing, and, therefore, that the
varying rates of their terminal output or discharge consti-
tute the main factor in the evolution of the physical and
physiological changes engaged in marking out the stages
of external ageing, and the sequence of cutaneous change,
during the entire span of life. These two circulations,
being from centre to periphery only, cannot return the substances
they are respectively circulating to their sources of origin,
or to a common radiating centre, as the haemal circulation
does, or secondarily find their way into the haemal circula-
tion, as the systemic lymphatic circulation does ; they,
therefore, being histologically free at their distal ends, are
compelled to expend them in the development of dermal
and epidermal structures and appendages, to be ultimately
shed, or finally liberated, by external exfoliation, after a
shorter or longer incorporation in surface, as well as deeper-
seated layers of the skin. Hence, they become the
principal sources of dermal and epidermal growth, both in
a material and dynamic respect, and so they are the almost
entire sources of surface, dermal and epidermal, modifica-
tion, and the prime factors of external ageing, as well as
the structural source of origin of many of the pathological
conditions of the skin, which are liable to arise at all
periods of life, mainly from faulty excretion or exfoliation,
and deficient or redundant circulation.
The depth and consistence of the dermal and epidermal
matrix, being principally regulated by the rate and amount
of the neural incorporation and excretion, varies in amount
at every stage of life, according to the degree of physio-
logical activity and freedom from mechanical obstacles
characterising the functional, or vital, working of the
individual organism. From this it follows that the depth
of the " wrinkles and lines " of ageing is determined by
neural circulation, deposition, and excretion in, and of
exfoliation of and from, the cutaneous textures, and their
character as to intensity and natural sequence impressed
on their subject in more or less easily read type.
Besides the surface markings of age left on the external
envelope of the body, the appendages of the skin, more
488 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
especially the hair, undergo changes of pigmentation,
which afford a very apparent and outstanding index to
the period of life reached by the individual, and, to some
extent, of the character of the life experience passed
through. Moreover, these pigmentary phenomena seem
to depend for causation on influences operating through
the neural circulatory media, chemically and physiologi-
cally, and represent, in sequence, the causes composing
ageing, synchronously with the other surface signs.
It may further be said that baldness, so widely preva-
lent and conspicuous in the present age, represents a
failure of the inner neural circulations to reach and sustain
the growth of the hair bulbs and shafts, while the haemal
circulation not being fully utilisable for the purpose, the
inevitable result is the failure of the hair growth, and
the consequent death and disappearance of the hair
structures, with atrophy and attenuation of the hair
follicles, to the extent that no recuperative procedure is,
or can be, attended with other effect than disappointment
to those who try them. The occurrence of baldness
must, therefore, be anticipated, and the precipitate occur-
rence of down-grade changes prevented, in which case
there seems hope for the retention or preservation of the
hair, for a time at least ; but here it is necessary to
indicate, that preventive treatment to be successful must
be carried out on absolutely scientific and non-empirical
lines, and with a continuous determination to maintain
the vital activity which nature is showing signs of
inability to sustain, and which, in time, she will be
compelled to abandon, or modify, in consonance with
related changes as general ageing proceeds, and as the
process of physiological involution becomes more and
more complete.
Besides the changes in pigmentation and growth
observable in the skin and its appendages as ageing
advances, a graduated series of changes is undergone by
its epidermic layers, more especially of the hands and
feet, which "tell the same tale" as we have here been
endeavouring to " unfold." Confining our remarks to
only one detail of the subject, that of the "ridging" of
the palmar and plantar surfaces respectively of the terminal
INVOLUTION 489
phalangeal extremities of the fingers and toes, we would
state broadly that these " ridges," and their intervening
" furrows," while maintaining exactly the same ground-
plan, barring changes due to accidental alteration and
obliteration, alter at different periods of life in their
proportionate height and depth. Being intimately related
to the sense of touch, they change in their manner of
accentuation with age and occupation, being at one age
and another more prominent, in proportion to local
necessity and the special education and wants of the
individual, as well as in proportion to the amount of
peripheral nervine material deposited in, and exfoliated
or shed by, the digital nerve terminals. Digital ridge
and furrow development waxes and wanes with the
phenomena of systemic or organic evolution and involu-
tion, culminating with the attainment of the former, and
gradually declining with the advance of the latter,
showing, however, considerable divergences in incidence,
generally and locally, determined by general and local
nervine conditions and circumstances.
These things must, therefore, be borne in mind in
connection with the possible medico-legal bearings of the
subject. Thus, in advanced life it is frequently observed
that the little, ring, and outer half of the middle fingers
show signs of effacement of the " ridge and furrow "
surface characters, long before the thumb, forefinger, and
the remaining half of the middle finger show any signs
of failure. The explanation of this inequality of efface-
ment incidence would seem to depend upon local nerve
distribution, along with the greater necessity for a more
prolonged extension of tactile acuteness by the latter
digits, and the consequent continuance of greater deter-
mination of epidermal material towards these more
frequently used and acutely sensitive surfaces — on the
principle of ubi stimulus ibi fluxus — proving once more
the truth of the contention that acuteness of innervation
and the maintenance of the circulation of neural pabulum
are always coincident and proportionate.
In association with the incidence of "ridge and furrow"
effacement is atrophic change in the bulbous extremities
of the affected digits, whereby a more or less phenomenal
49o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
subcutaneous shrinkage takes place, resulting in the
production of a marked longitudinal skin " creasing,"
with less obvious transverse cavo-relief marking, after, to
some extent, the fashion of the washerwoman's fingers
when long immersed in soap and water.
All these changes may be regarded as involutionary,
and the outcome of nutritive shrinkage of the episkeletal,
or soft, tissues surrounding mainly the terminal phalanges,
but likewise also of those of the whole limbs, and trunk
especially, or those innervated and fed by the systemic
nervous system.
EXTRACT XLV.
ON BODY TEMPERATURE.
The normal temperature of the human body is now
generally understood to be 98*4 Fahr., and any consider-
able or continued departure from that standard is to be
looked upon as the outcome of some pathological con-
dition of one or another part, or of the whole, of the
bodily structures. The regular maintenance of this
degree of temperature must, therefore, be looked upon as
due to the balanced action or operation of the various
forces and forms of energy belonging to that body, in
its equipoised physiological condition, on the materials,
solid, liquid, and gaseous, which find an entrance into
it, plus what is due to the voluntary exercise of any or all
of the organs and structures under the control of the will.
Thus physiologico-chemical changes, comprising those
of composition and decomposition, and the synthetic and
analytic metabolic activities, with the expenditure of nerve
and muscle energy and its attendant molecular disturb-
ances, besides what, over and above these, remains of the
now vanishing " vital work " of the economy generally,
make up the series of heat producing and supporting
agencies, which go to maintain a temperature of 98*4 F.
So long as the contributions of caloric from these various
sources are neither more nor less than the physiological
standard necessitates, the natural degree of 98*4 must
be the result. So soon, however, as these from any cause
or causes become disturbed or uncertain, the tempera-
ture suffers a rise or fall, as the case may be, with a
consequent lapse into a pathological condition, which
492 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
condition must necessarily be dependent on, and deter-
mined by, the character and cause of the increase or
diminution, and of the particular part of the calorific
machinery involved in the particular instance.
Thus a state of fever may be due to an increase in
the quantity of caloric contributed from one or more
of these sources, while a state of collapse may, in like
manner, be due to a lessened contribution, the various
degrees of increased and diminished temperature included
between these extremes being similarly determined.
As a matter of everyday clinical experience, however,
we find it difficult to apportion, with any degree of exacti-
tude, the sources of increased or diminished temperature,
and so have to be content with an approximate attempt
at a solution of the complicated problem, and a corre-
spondingly empirical choice and administration of our
ameliorative and curative agencies, medicinal and others.
The state known as fever, or pyrexia, being due to one
or more causes, the sources and nature of which it is
of the greatest importance to determine, let us endeavour
to give an example of our course of procedure in arriving
at a solution of the problem by the choice of the simplest
known example of the condition, viz. febricula.
Febricula is a somewhat variable affection, both in its
intensity and duration, and arises, culminates, and declines
often, or generally, without the necessity for any interven-
tion or alarm ; being, consequently, not often seen, but
sometimes experienced by those competent to draw scientific
conclusions regarding it, convalescence ensuing through
the untrammelled and unadulterated operations of the vis
medicatrix nature. The disease is usually ushered in by
a more or less pronounced sense of " chill," succeeded by
a more or less sustained rise of temperature, with a
varying amount of functional or organic derangement
or disturbance, and is succeeded by a shorter or longer
period of recovery or convalescence.
The sense of " chill " may be induced by the operation
of various causes, such as exposure to cold or wet, or
cold and wet, and consists of the excitation of the vaso-
motor nerve mechanism of the skin, with the contraction
of its muscular mechanisms, the closure of the ducts
ON BODY TEMPERATURE 493
of its sweat glands, producing, it may be, the condition
known as " cutis anserina " and the haemic depletion of its
surface layers, with the consequent and proportionate,
more or less appreciable haemic repletion, of one, more, or
all of the deeper-seated parts. This, the initial stage
of the morbid process, if it can be so called, lasts for a
somewhat indefinite period, when it is succeeded by a
more or less pronounced reaction, consisting of a more or
less profound disturbance of the whole " internal economy,"
with a greater or lesser exaltation of temperature, consti-
tuting the fever, febricula, or pyrexia, which, in turn,
lasts for a somewhat indefinite period, or usually until
the sweat glands have been unlocked and diaphoresis
established.
In analysing these events, and noting their sequence, we
are struck with what seems to us a " casual relationship "
running through and connecting them one with another ;
thus the " cold and wet," acting as the initial influences
in the production of the morbid phenomena described,
are instrumental in procuring the closure of the channels
by which surplus caloric is discharged through the
external surface of the body, and so, in arresting its
radiation and regulated dissipation, and procuring its
consequent and proportionate retention and accumulation
within the body ; primarily, therefore, the increase of
temperature in this instance is due to retention, or non-
discharge, of caloric ; secondarily, however, it may be
increased by physical, chemical, and biological action,
exerted by the detention within the body of noxious and
actively anabolic and katabolic materials.
Summarising these remarks, we may describe febricula
as a morbid condition, due to retention of caloric from
closure of the channels of radiation, with a consequently
increased amount of metabolism, and requiring for its
removal the spontaneous, or artificial, reopening of said
channels — the whole diseased process in its initial, cul-
minating, and closing stages, consisting of merely a
mechanico-chemico-physical disturbance, and its subse-
quent subsidence leaving " not a trace behind." We
may here remark that a temperature of 98*4 F. can
only be maintained by a regulative machinery, which is
494 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
possessed by every human body in a state of health, and
the disturbance of which leads to a rise or fall, as the case
may be, or to the development of a more or less pro-
longed pathological departure from the normal tempera-
ture. The basis of this regulative machinery is, we
conclude, located in the skin externally and the air-
passages internally, whose outlets, open or closed, are
regulated by nerve and muscle, agencies which determine
the proper amount of insensible transpiration and sensible
perspiration and respiratory output respectively passing
through them, and, so long as the conditions of health
are maintained, sustain the standard of the body tempera-
ture at 98*4 F. Thus, we find that a healthy human
body in a state of rest, does not require the free opening of
its cutaneous apertures, provided a suitable temperature
of its environment prevails, hence we conclude that the
ordinary external and internal radiation suffice to maintain
the natural, or normal, 98*4 F. We find also that a
human body in a state of activity requires, for the main-
tenance of 98*4 F., a more or less free exercise of the
functions of transpiration and perspiration, in addition to
that of ordinary internal and external radiation.
The general cutaneous surface of the body is constantly,
more or less, employed in this function, and is to a great
extent, although not by any means totally, sufficient for
the vital function of heat or temperature regulation, the
mucous and certain serous surfaces, as well as gland
textures, being also largely utilised for the same purpose.
Radiation is constantly, therefore, in evidence from the
surfaces of the body, wherever they are reached by the
surrounding air — whether that air is above or below the
temperature of the body in question — hence radiation is a
relative process, being regulated to a great extent by the
prevailing surrounding and inhaled air, or external
atmospheric temperature ; besides, it seems to us not to
be regular or identical in its amount throughout the area
or extent of its occurrence, but to prevail to a fuller
extent over certain areas in particular, such as, for instance,
the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, which,
being usually exposed to contact with relatively cold
surfaces, radiate their heat much more rapidly, in conse-
ON BODY TEMPERATURE 495
quence, than the general surfaces. It, moreover, seems to
us here, that caloric is much more largely and rapidly
transmitted along the nerve trunks of the limbs, than
through their general structures, or substance, and that
the warmness of the hands, so often and almost regularly
experienced by many, is due to its correspondingly rapid
escape, or discharge, through the terminal nerve arbori-
sations, sudoriferous channels, and epidermic surfaces of
these parts ; and thus may be explained the why and
wherefore of such enigmatic occurrences, as the simul-
taneous existence in the same limbs of " cold knees and
hot feet," the deeper nerve trunks being in such cases
utilised for the passage of under-currents of caloric from
the central to the peripheral regions of the body without,
necessarily to any perceptible extent, influencing the inter-
mediate overlying regions — consequently, nerve trunks,
with their terminal extensions, constitute, so to speak, an
ideal ready-made and continuous mechanism for the
conduction of caloric, its distribution, and, if necessary,
its discharge, so as most readily and effectually to secure
the maintenance of the required standard temperature.
Any solution of continuity of this mechanism, therefore,
constitutes a grave danger from the point of view of its
importance as an instrument for the regulation of body
temperature.
In performing this function we may regard the whole
textures, constituting and immediately encircling the whole
nervous system, as lending themselves in greater or lesser
degree to the accomplishment of a common object, the
circulation, the equal distribution, and disposal of the
common stock of caloric, and the consequent maintenance
of a regular temperature — all which it accomplishes, no
doubt, in conjunction and collaboration with the blood
circulation, the one, in many cases, substituting or supple-
menting the deficiencies of the other, not only in the
disposal of caloric, but in supplying some of the materials
required in gland secretion and excretion. Thus, the
sweat glands, the nasal mucosa, and Bowman's glands,
the lachrymal glands, the salivary glands, the pituitary
gland, the coccygeal gland, and many other glands, as
well as the lymph channels pervading the eyes and the
496 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
ears, which may be regarded as deriving their lymph
supplies principally from cerebrospinal sources, supple-
menting them when and where necessary from the
adjacent blood circulation through its liquor sanguinis,
and expending them in a regulated outflow, all which
is accompanied by a regulated escape of caloric and
consequent steady maintenance of the body temperature.
Circulation in its widest sense we thus realise embraces
every variety of circulation, material and dynamic, which
has been observed in action throughout the living fabric
of the body, and constitutes at once an almost ever ready
and available means of maintaining the temperature of
that body at a constant degree — we say, almost ever
ready and available, because occasionally there occur
intervals of disturbance when morbid influences are at
work begetting pathological elevations, or depressions of
temperature, according as the means of escape, or
imprisonment, of caloric are provided, and according to
the extent to which the powers of natural adjustment
have been affected.
Amongst the circulations referred to, as operative in
the regulation of body temperature, we must include
the circulation of energy, chemical, vital, nerve and
caloric, in fact, all forms of force involved in and flowing
from functional activity.
By these various means of upholding and sustaining
a regular, or mean, temperature, the living body has at
its disposal an "array of choice," so to speak, of a
very complete and varied character, by which the vis
medicatrix nature is enabled successfully to assert her
powers amid the most changeful surroundings. The
increase or decrease of body temperature beyond the
degree of 98*4 F. is most jealously regarded by nature,
and the requisite means of adjustment being almost
always available she is almost constantly able to main-
tain the requisite equilibrium ; but if perchance an accident
occurs to modify, or destroy, these means, she, if the life
be still sustained, begins along the lines of action still
remaining to her to remove the effects of the accident
with its consequent " wreckage," and to effect the work
of the readjustment of these means and the restoration
ON BODY TEMPERATURE 497
of the mean temperature. The other great means, viz.
the process of respiration, of allowing the escape or dis-
charge of caloric, and of regulating body temperature,
might be described a little in detail. The air passages of
the human body, and of those of the mammalia generally,
comprise the nasal passages, including the pneumatic spaces
of the face and head, the mouth, the pharynx, the larynx,
the trachea, the bronchial tubes, and the pulmonary
vesicles — surely a list of anatomical spaces of great
variety and complexity, and comprising at once a series
of pneumatic tubes and chemical chambers, where, besides
facilities for gaseous diffusion and chemical reactions, a
caloric adjustment apparatus is provided, which, acting
synchronously, and in concert with the other means of
adjustment, plays an important part, perhaps only second
to the skin, in the maintenance of the standard of body
temperature. Here, in the " regions of calm," amid the
air spaces of the face and head and throughout the narrow
but wide expanse of the minute bronchial and vesicular
spaces of the pulmonary organs, unaffected by the exigen-
cies of respiratory effort, where the residual air "lingers"
we have an ample theatre adapted, the means provided,
and every facility afforded by which, besides chemical
interchange, the great function of caloric disposal and
regulation can be effected with exactitude and safety.
The maintenance of a mean, or standard, body tem-
perature by the disposal of surplus caloric, and the equal
distribution of cerebro-spinal lymph or fluid being accom-
plished by the synchronous and duplex working of the
same machinery, acting in its double capacity of caloric
discharger and lymph circulator, the proper adjustment
and working of this machinery, therefore, become a matter
of the greatest importance in disease.
Force and matter, in their inter-dependent relations to
each other within the living body, circulate through the
same channels, work by the same mechanisms, and when
kept within normal limits, yield the highest results, and
perform the best work for their respective and combined
materio-dynamic expenditures.
2 1
EXTRACT XLVI.
ON SLEEP.
Systemic nerve force cannot be continuously discharged
by the nerve-force-producing agencies, and the process is,
therefore, interrupted by repose or sleep, in which both
the wasting results of material tear and wear and dynamic
loss are made good, and the storage capacity, material
and dynamic, of each neuron, and system of neurons,
renewed and secured in equipoised and non-explosive
proportions, the empty or exhausted being, it may be to
some extent, supplied from the full, or plethoric, and a
non-explosive medium, and smoothly working condition
maintained. Thus the continuance of the power of
sustained brain work is secured by periods of redistri-
bution, as well as reproduction of nerve force or energy,
and by the removal of waste or effete material products,
and the supply of fresh materials to take the place of
these waste or effete products during the daily recurring
intervals of sleep, when the presiding ego itself retires
for some repose behind the barriers of its material impedi-
menta, inhibited for the time being from the world of
sense and time by the idle and exhausted machinery which
it has ceased to animate from the lack of nerve energy or
power and the accumulation of disintegrated matter.
During the intervals of sleep the psychic, sensory, and
motor neurons cease working, while the sympathetic, or
truly trophic, nervous system continues active, directing
the removal of debris, laying down new materials where
required by the incidence of waste, and " burnishing up"
the complex machinery of the whole vital, but more
ON SLEEP 499
especially systemic, nerve organisms. Moreover, during
these periods of sleep, and of course the " sounder
physiologically they are the better, nerve energy, where
it has been over-expended, is renewed, if not by regenera-
tion, by the re-distribution of the unspent energy of the
idle and surcharged neurons, thus relieving the latter of
any unneeded explosive or potential energy, or what is
unrequired for their immediate functional needs, by trans-
ferring it to the exhausted and force-expended neurons,
which have been " bearing the work and worry of the
day."
Sleep ! What is sleep from this point of view ? It is
the cessation of conscious cerebration and the controlled
expenditure of nerve energy, whether in " thought, word,
or action," i.e. of the intellectual, sensory, volitional, and
motor modes of nerve energy brought about by the
exhaustion of that energy, in whole or in part, or by the
material or mechanical clogging of the generating, regu-
lating, and expending machinery, due to more or less
intense, or prolonged, action and wear and tear, and in
consequence, it may be, of auto-toxis, or intoxication,
begotten of the accumulation of effete toxic and mal-active
substances, and a consequent temporary paralysis cerebri.
We again ask, What is sleep ? That is a question
which has aroused the curiosity and baffled the oft-tried
ingenuity of the human mind in every generation of the
race, and which still awaits an answer. The presumption,
or assurance, therefore, involved or implied here, in again
attempting an answer, may perhaps be excused on the
ground of the attempter's possession of the usual, if
not an abnormal, curiosity, and a desire, if possible, to
add a little more to the modicum of truth which has
already accumulated on the subject.
Sleep may be further described as the cessation of the
function of active, or physiologico-psychological, cerebra-
tion in its complete systemic aspect, due to the operation
of an inherent property and process of inhibition possessed
by the individual and collective neurons, or to the exist-
ence in the neuronal commonwealth of a self-regulative
and inhibitory machinery ; or, it may be, to a combination
of individual and general neuronal inhibitory systems, one
500 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
or other, or both, of which may be in use, according as
the sleep is shallow or profound, the former being
exemplified in the states of dreaming, and the latter
in the dreamless sleep of great fatigue or exhaustion
Exhaustion of the nerve energy production, which,
under ordinary circumstances, supervenes once in the
twenty-four hours, usually synchronising with the " day's
decline," determines the process of inhibition under the
normal physiological conditions, the material waste entailed
in the day's cerebral work and the neuronal output, the
lost, or spent, energy and the material waste being com-
mensurate with, and representing respectively, the amount
of dynamic expenditure and material loss or displacement.
As to how inhibition of the process and the machinery of
cerebration is effected we must confess to a want of
tangible evidence and proved data whereon to base
more than the slenderest inference ; nevertheless, taking
advantage of what little tangible evidence and data we
have, and straining the modicum of inferential light on
which we can legitimately lay hold for the purpose, we
think we are warranted in offering the opinion that it is
effected in some such way as the following : — Up to the
present the " weight of evidence " favours the view that
the neuron is an independent unit histologically, but that
it is in contiguity with its neighbouring neurons so inti-
mately that, for combined functional purposes, it is
virtually in continuity through mutual dendritic contact,
the dendrons being possessed of the power of amoeboid
movements whereby they can be projected and retracted.
From this we would infer that the projection, or extension,
of these neighbouring, communicating processes or den-
drons coincides with the period of co-ordinated cell or
neuronal activity, and similarly that their retraction or
relaxation coincides with the period of cell rest or unicell
activity, and that these processes, being more or less in
active exercise during the period of the " waking day,"
become exhausted, and require rest, and, therefore, on
the withdrawal of all stimulus to further exertion they
become for the time being permanently and systematically
released and withdrawn for, we may suppose, purposes
of material nutrition and renewal of cell energy. The
ON SLEEP 501
process of retraction or withdrawal of the communicating
dendritic processes of the neuronal commonwealth may
be said to resemble what ensues when a countless crowd
of " expanded " umbrellas are " drawn down " after a
" deluge of rain " ; we would claim, therefore, that this
not only synchronises with, but that it is productive of,
the inhibition of the process of cerebration, and conse-
quently the cause of sleep. We may further infer that,
with the growing exhaustion of the cerebral, and other
nerve-cell, energy from continued exercise, the dendritic
processes naturally become disposed to droop from the
lowering supply of energy, and hence finally withdraw
from immediate contact with each other and with neigh-
bouring dendrons when the act of inhibition becomes an
accomplished fact and sleep reigns supreme.
Meantime the sympathetic nervous system enters on
supreme control of all the vital processes and work of
the body, restoring, after sleep, to the systemic nervous
system, the control of its own particular work, with its
machinery burnished up and repairs effected where
required, as well as with its nerve energy renewed and
made capable of lasting out another diurnal " spell of
work." Sleep, therefore, is a thing of the systemic
nervous system and by the systemic nervous system,
not involving the sympathetic nervous system, except
it may be by an increase of work, nor directly the
sanguineous circulation, although indirectly that circulation
is largely involved, as providing the materials from which
the nerve protoplasm is renewed and maintained, as well
as much of the lost nerve energy obtained.
In this collection of neuronal dendritic phenomena is
bound up the most cryptic part of the mysterious union
of mind and body, of the ego with the non-ego, as well
as the mechanism of consciousness ; besides, in this
multum in parvo physico-mental region, we are in touch
with the supreme physiologico-psychological problems, in
the solution of which are involved the destiny of man,
mental and physical, with all that is involved therein and
flows therefrom. It will thus be realised that, on an
absolutely true physiological working of these minute
and uncountable textures, depends much of the health, the
502 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
happiness, and the personal success of life, as well as the
solution of the greatest of all mysteries, the destiny of
the immaterial and indestructible ego in its relationship
to the great "beyond."
Sleep may be said to be " sound " when the whole
mechanism of consciousness is in complete abeyance, and
to be " disturbed " when any part of that mechanism is
in activity from any cause ; in the former of these con-
ditions we may take it that the whole neuronal elements,
with their related and relating contiguous dendritic
extensions, withdraw themselves into a state of individu-
ality so complete, as to render their united action
impossible, and, therefore, the resulting sleep is sound ;
in the latter, in like manner, we may take it that one or
more of the neurons, or it may be a group or groups of
neurons, remain or become contiguously related, and,
therefore, active, and so result in the state of sleep
becoming disturbed. The latter condition is that in
which "dreams," "talking," and "walking in sleep," and
other bodily movements take place, the condition itself
being due to, or resulting from, the non-inhibition, or
the defective inhibition, of one or more of a group or
groups of more or less related neurons, psychic, sensory,
or motor. If the dreams be elaborate, consistent, and
well remembered, we may regard them as the product
of grouped neurons ; if not, then we may infer that the
neuronal area implicated is proportionately smaller, and,
when absolutely no memory of the dream cerebration is
left, we may further infer that the leakage of nerve
energy has been almost nil. The motor neurons are
affected in like manner by, it may be, the primary motor
determination or automatic discharge or escape of motor
nerve energy along, it may be, much frequented paths,
and on a considerable scale, or to single muscles, or
groups of muscles, according to the degree in which the
motor phenomena are manifested, and to their manner of
combination and co-ordination. All such phenomena,
therefore, whether purely psychic, sensory, or motor, are
due to faulty inhibition or undue instability of the nerve
energy storage mechanisms, or both, it may be, in certain
individuals and in certain conditions of health.
ON SLEEP 503
Sleep is thus an absolutely physiological condition, and
its incidence is due to the operation of physiological
factors, these factors being confined, in their range of
incidence and influence, to the specific histological or
neuronal elements of the systemic nervous system, and
the dynamic activities of that system, to the end that
cerebration in its full and true sense should, or might, be
maintained at its highest and most sustained and effective
pitch or level ; in other words, to borrow a M working M
simile, it constitutes the period of rest for the neuro-systemic
manufactory or industry, to let off steam, clean and oil
machinery, remove debris, re-stock with fresh raw
materials, and again get up steam. It, therefore, comes
between the ego, or central immaterial essentiality or
essence, and the sympathetic nervature or vital materio-
dynamic essentiality, with a range of temporarily function-
less materio-dynamic neuro-muscular structures, which
effectually bar united, active, and co-ordinated cerebration,
including sensory and motor activities, and intelligence in
all its phases, excepting during incomplete incidence and
dreams in all their varieties.
We are warranted, therefore, in inferring that total
cerebro-spinal temporary paralysis or inhibition, on which
sleep is dependent for its induction and continuance,
coincides with, and is due to, a solution of continuity
or contiguity, as the case may be, of the nerve cell
processes of the purely psychic or mental higher systemic,
and the cerebro-spinal neurons generally, and ceases when
that continuity or contiguity is, or becomes, re-established.
It is rhythmic in occurrence, coinciding or synchronising,
in the human species generally, with the " day's decline,"
or onset of darkness, and terminating with the dawn, or
from when the stimuli of light and sound are withdrawn,
and the " silence of nature " is established, the sensorium
then losing its receptive and responsive, or sensory and
motor, powers, until they are renewed ; in the lower
animal and vegetable worlds, however, a greater variety
in the incidence of sleep takes place to a great extent,
apparently due to the acquirement of habit and the
requirements of environment.
The length of its duration is as various as the
5o4 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
individual units of the human race, but, generally
speaking, it may be said to vary between a sixth and
a third or more of the twenty-four hours, or complete
day ; throughout the rest of animated nature its length
and intensity both vary indefinitely according to the " law
of necessity." Sleep may be called the counterfeit of
death, and daily illustrates the occurrence of discontinuity
between the higher materio-dynamic and neuro-intellectual
elements of the body corporate, and shows their powers of
separate or independent existence and of re-amalgamation.
Inasmuch as the existence of the ego is not realised during
sleep, and its necessary continuance or existence is unde-
niable, we are, moreover, entitled to maintain that it is
capable of a separate or independent existence, and that
the doctrine of immortality is warranted by psychologico-
physiological science, based both on observation and
experiment, so universally assented to, that a denial of
its authenticity becomes possible only to those who refuse
to accept evidence, and prefer to see nothing but annihila-
tion as " the solution of the whole matter."
Law, whether physical, dynamical, or metaphysical,
being absolute in its sway and inexorable in its incidence,
and because so far as science has yet pronounced she has
refused to accept of the doctrine of annihilation, she must
necessarily, sooner or later, pronounce herself in all
spontaneity in favour of that of immortality, and what a
change will then come over " the spirit of her dream " ?
and the outlook on human life and destiny ?
EXTRACT XLVII.
ON THE BLOOD— WHAT IS IT? AND WHAT
DOES IT DO?
The theme expressed by these words is, of course, far
too extensive and arguable to be compressed into less
than volumes, and too wide-reaching to come within the
purview of any mere essayist. We therefore, in approach-
ing the subject, merely intend to make out a few of its
more salient features in " bird's-eye view " manner for
biologico-topographical purposes, so to speak, so as to be
able to fit it into the general plan of our already executed
sketch-and-patch-work.
The blood may be described as the great central
organic and inorganic fluid emporium of the body, into
which enter the pristine or fresh nutritive pabulum as
transmitted from the alimentary canal, and the residual
lymph or waste material gathered from every tissue and
structural component of the living and working organism,
conveyed hither by appropriate vasculatures, and then
circulated by cardiac dynamic agency through an all-
pervading systemic series of elaborately organised channels
to every part of that organism, there to be made available
for the nutrition of all its parts. It is a fluid, therefore,
of a most composite character, inasmuch as it thus consists
of materials representing every phase of physiologico-
chemical, or chemico-physiological, union, admixture, and
condition, and every stage of chemico-dynamic activity
and molecular potentiality, so to speak — from the physio-
logically integrative and organic to the pathologically
disintegrative or inorganic — the extremes of dynamicism
506 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and adynamicism characterising the behaviour of the
sanguineous molecule in its relations to the operation of
the laws of metabolism and the maintenance of vital
cohesion and structural continuity or life.
The blood may fairly and truly be regarded as equally
composed of nutritive plasma and post-nutritive or dis-
integrated material, both being, or having been, emptied
into the common stream, the former to meet the wants
of worn-out or wasted tissue, the latter to be still made
subservient, so far as it can be, to the wants of the
organism, or excreted as no longer utilisable, or, it may
be, hurtful. The processes of digestion and assimilation
may be said to have energised or vitalised the former,
while the process of vital exercise, organic tear and wear,
has de-energised or de-vitalised the latter.
The process of vitalisation of the blood plasma
is accomplished in the long series of changes through
which it passes in its reduction from the raw food
elements to its integration by the tissue elements, and
consists, or results, in the conversion of much of it
into homogeneous liquor sanguinis and granules, corpus-
cles, lymphocites, and whatever else of organised character
is assumed by, or detectable in, its circulating materials.
This description, of course, only applies to its proper
alimentary part, the other, or proper lymphatic part, being
mingled with it after its collection from the lymph spaces
and its subjection to a kindred process of glandular or
organic assortment, so far as its devitalised materials can
lend themselves to such a process ; lymphocitosis even
here being possible by the homogenetic function of the
bone marrow and lymphatic glands proper. The blood
so constituted can, consequently, not be physiologically
divided into its respective elements of, or distinguished
as, new alimentary materials and old proper lymphatic
elements, except by colour. We must, therefore, at all
times remember that in the human blood we have clini-
cally to deal with a fluid everywhere containing and
circulating much devitalised and adynamic material, as
well as the future nutritive pabulum of the tissues,
vitalised and dynamic with the energy of life, and capable
of assuming every form of organisation to be met with
ON THE BLOOD 507
in the body. So long, therefore, as the physiological
balance between the two elements characterises the com-
position of the blood and its distribution, so long will
the health of the body be maintained ; but so soon as
that balance is disturbed, in like manner will it be
followed by a proportionate pathological departure from
that condition.
Besides the functions above, merely hinted at or
implied, we must be prepared to find that there exists
in the blood machinery^ apart from, but intrinsically resident
in it, a most elaborate system of chemical attraction and
repulsion, and a power of physiological assortment by which
the fresh or nutritive plasmic elements are separated, or
rather kept separate, from the used-up or non-nutritive,
and the processes of metabolism and integration of tissue
secured and maintained, while simultaneously the hygiene
of the whole vital area is accomplished by appropriate
systemic effluents, or excretionary agencies, the main
examples of which may be adduced as the intestinal, the
renal, the pulmonary, and the cutaneous.
The performance of such many-sided chemico-physio-
logical work, as thus outlined, not only implies, but
necessitates, the existence, within the apparently simple
and elemental blood fluid, of a most elaborate organic
and organising machinery, as we have said ; and this we
are warranted in seeing in, and assigning to, its corpus-
cular elements, from their ubiquitous existence, their high
structural character, their power of lending themselves to
circulatory disposal, and their absolutely living condition,
with their dynamically active ability to dispose or dis-
tribute, and chemico- physiologically assort, the blood
plasma into the elemental constituents of the various
structural elements of the body, while at the same time
engaging in the vital work of removal of effete and used-
up or katabolic materials.
Thus a vital chemistry is at work here which must
baffle the most skilful experimentation to imitate, and
which oversteps the tiny environments of science as yet
known and practically applied, and reduces to one com-
posite whole the ever active vital physics and dynamics
of organism to the end that life may be begun, continued,
508 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
and perpetuated, or, in a word, evolved from forces and
materials devoid of life. In this process we, therefore, are
compelled to observe that vital chemistry knows little,
and utilises less, of the strict " letter of the law," in its
methods of dealing with the elements of matter by the
vital processes of dynamic charge and discharge, and that
it has short and effective means of dealing with the pro-
blems of nutrition and tissue metabolism, which nothing
but " vital law " can perform ; verily, although science,
chemical and physiological, has done much to unravel
the secrets of life, there comes a limit to its achieve-
ments when the proceedings of that great entity are to be
surveyed in its everyday work. The living current of
the blood, as it rushes through our field of vision, or is
subjected to the most crucial, but still non-vital, tests of
non-living science, is carrying with it its ten thousand
secrets, hidden beyond the microscope's reach, and re-
moved from the possibility of chemical investigation ;
consequently, the secret of life, we feel justified here in
claiming, is the most sacred in nature, the very " Lhasa " of
science, and the perennial justification of the best and
most aspiring efforts which the ingenuity of mankind can
put forth, or the intelligence of man carry out.
It would not be too much to say that the chemistry
of the living blood contains the secret of " the unification
of the elements/' the working out on vitally dynamic
lines of the charge and discharge of its organic molecular
energy, the positively charged molecules representing the
elements of living matter or organising material, and the
negatively charged molecules the elements of dying or
dead matter or disorganising material, each with their
mutual attractions and repulsions, and their intrinsic
powers of life and death. Thus it would seem that
nutrition and metabolism, or the processes of integration
and disintegration, can be carried out within the same
organism by the alternate charge and discharge of its
molecular magazines, and the continued existence therein
of mutual affinity and repulsion of negative and positive
energy within the substance of, and actually composing,
its molecules or atoms ; their dynamic condition, therefore,
becomes the key to the vital position or the secret of life,
ON THE BLOOD 509
with its implied negative death and its emissary disease,
and may be said, with a stretch of the scientific imagi-
nation, to shed a ray of light into the darkness surrounding
these great problems, as well as the problem of matter and
energy generally. Energy, in all its varieties, radio-
activity, and matter ponderable and imponderable, thus
shrink into a nearness of relationship and likeness of
character, which may be made to yield some day, to well-
directed investigation of the biological, physical, and
dynamic departments of science, stupendous results,
abstract and applied.
Instead of being separated by great gulfs, all these
departments of science together constitute but an un-
broken line of ascent, from the simple to the complex,
from the elementary to the organised, from the material
to the dynamic, from the dead to the living ; in short,
from matter to spirit, in which the negative, or temporary,
at last gives place to or merges in the positive, the
affirmative, or the eternal — matter, energy, and spirit thus
constituting the universe, when the " fulness of the time "
at last arrives, and forming an unbroken whole of the
" entire world," in which "death at last shall," in truth,
" be swallowed up in victory," and when science and
revelation will stand for ever joined in mutual agreement,
and oneness of end and aim, the bulwarks of eternal
truth.
EXTRACT XLVIII.a.
ON RESPIRATION, PULMONARY AND CEPHALIC.
Respiration is, or may be regarded as, a process of
chemico-physiological admixture of atmospheric air with
the blood, as it passes in minutely subdivided processional
order through the lumina of the pulmonary capillaries,
under the guidance of a systemico-sympathetically regu-
lated nervine machinery at a measured rate, according to
the existing bodily physiological conditions and necessities.
In the immediate process of chemico-physiological admix-
ture of air and blood, in the delicate vesicular substance
of the ultimate pulmonary textures, an interchange of
chemical elements is effected, the immediate outcome of
which is the disengagement or discharge of superabundant
carbon and the engagement or substitution of subabundant
oxygen, which latter becomes the predominant chemical
instrument of metabolic change in the prolonged and
complex processes of nutrition and elimination, which
make up in great part the chemico-physical phenomena
of life. It therefore becomes self-evident that a physio-
logically perfect performance of this function is essential
to the production and maintenance of health, any deviation
from which must necessarily be followed by a proportionate
alteration of its tone and condition. The chemistry of
the process of interchange of gases arising from the
contact, or admixture, of the atmospheric air with the
blood, in the process of respiration, has not yet been
fully mastered ; we must, therefore, confine ourselves to
treating of only a few of its most salient points, as, for
instance, how the two principal physical constituents of
ON RESPIRATION
5"
the blood, the corpuscles and liquor sanguinis, are
respectively affected by the changes ensuing in the
process of aeration, and how the economy of systemic
innervation is secondarily affected. Aeration of the blood
in the lungs is necessarily a continuous or rhythmical
process, which keeps pace with the pulmonary circulation,
as it disseminates throughout the pulmonary capillary
vessels, the impure blood returning from the body,
re-collects it after renewal or oxygenation, and returns
it into the heart for redistribution ; and is determined and
effected by a closely related cardiac-pulmonary nervature,
which conjoins the two sets of organs within the same
nervine " sphere of influence," and " operates " them by
the same central nervine management, so to speak, thus
securing a oneness of physiological purpose and a com-
bined functional result.
The corpuscular, or what we may call the more
organised and vitalised element of the blood, undergoes
a visible alteration in colour in its exposure to air,
evidently due to chemico-physiological molecular change
and exchange, in its organic constituents, of a most
essential and far-reaching nature, in virtue of which
a noxiously laden metabolic vehicle becomes again the
bearer to " every hole and corner " of the body, of physio-
logically pure tissue pabulum, suitable for the anabolic
wants of the wasted, or katabolised, organism, which it
distributes with the metabolic power due to corpuscular,
or vital, energy and active organic chemical affinity, as
the varying needs of the several tissue elements demand.
Each corpuscle of the arterial blood may thus be re-
garded as conveying matter and energy, derived from
atmospheric air and venous blood, to every organic
element of the body, on the expenditure of which, in
exchange for used-up organic elements, it once more
returns to the pulmonary " place of exchange," to leave
its used-up burden, and once more to " furnish its coffers"
with the required vital " currency," for the vital and
continuous work of organic exchange.
Each corpuscle, moreover, being possessed of the passive
power of independent movement and disposal within the
blood stream, may be regarded as communicating with its
512 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
neighbouring corpuscles, and thus by itself, or through
them directly, or indirectly, with every cell lining the
blood vasculature, and thence with every cell directly
associated by contiguity of cell body, or continuity of
cell process, with that vasculature, hence the influence
of the corpuscle may be said to be felt universally through-
out the haemal, and associated structural, or organic,
elements of the body.
The liquor sanguinis, the other great blood element,
may be regarded as conveying everywhere, in somewhat
like manner, the perhaps less organised and vitalised
constituents of tissue plasma supplying the structures
requiring such, and re-collecting by osmosis, perhaps,
certain lymphoid elements of tissue waste, for conversion
to future use, or for elimination through the various
excretory agencies of the body and the lungs, the bowel,
or intestinal canal, the kidneys, and the skin.
That the alimentary elements, organic and inorganic,
solid, liquid, and gaseous, entering the body, and requir-
ing for their metabolic disposal the services of its entire
organic machinery, are, under normal physiological condi-
tions, exactly balanced in weight and chemical equivalents
by waste products in the form of the materials transpired,
exhaled, exuded, and excreted, or leaving the body, is
a statement, the truth of which, on such grounds as the
above, must now be accepted as axiomatic. When the
physiological estimate of the quantity of ingesta necessary
for the maintenance of physiological health has been
formed, it behoves that that estimate ought always to
be the basis of demand and supply, and that any departure
from it ought to be made on true physiological lines.
The quality, as well as quantity of the ingesta, however,
must also be subject to physiological determination and
limitation as well, or a departure from the standard of
physiological health must ensue, of a magnitude propor-
tionate to the departure from the physiological rule of
choice. In this latter respect the lower animals, and some
of our more savage fellow-creatures, maintain a higher
standard of choice, in respect of quantity and quality,
when free to choose, than does so-called civilised man ;
and so maintain the continuity of physiological health
ON RESPIRATION 513
to a greater degree than the latter does, even with the
assistance of " printed rules."
Referring further to the two great blood constituents —
the corpuscular and the liquor sanguinis — it may be
remarked that the former, at least the red corpuscles,
acts from within the blood-stream, in effecting those
metabolic processes in the economy of nutrition for which
it is responsible, with the exception of what is effected by
the " wandering cells " which escape through the inter-
stices of the lining vascular endothelium to perform most
important hygienic, and other more or less known physio-
logical work in extra-vascular regions — this, of course,
refers to the non-red corpuscles only — the latter, the
liquor sanguinis, escapes through the vascular endothelium
by, we would suppose, cell agency, into the cells and
fibres, or cell processes, of the whole so-called extra-
vascular structures of the body, and into the stroma of
the systemic nervine basis, the neuroglia, when it is
utilised by the extra-vascular, or sympathetically in-
nervated structures, and the systemic nerve structures,
with their muscular and other continuations respectively.
The red corpuscles thus never leave the blood-stream,
continuing to circulate therein while its vasculature re-
mains intact, but disseminate their nutritive materials and
chemico-physical energy by cell and fibre continuity to
the most distant parts and structural elements of the
body ; the white corpuscles, however, are allowed a
greater latitude of movement, in that they are permitted
to penetrate to the regions lying outside the blood vascu-
lature, where their phagocytic and anti-pathogenic powers
are utilised in maintaining tissue hygiene, and promoting
extra-vascular physiological change and circulation within
the compass and reach of their somewhat extended oppor-
tunities and vital powers. The liquor sanguinis, from
its lymphoid character, necessarily may penetrate the walls
of the entire blood vasculature, by osmosis, and pass
directly through those apertures in it permeable by the
white corpuscles, but we must be prepared to find that its
nutrient circulatory distribution is confined within such
limits as secure its reaching, in its physiologically pure
state, the tissues whose wants it is destined to supply in
2 K
5i4 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
order that the lymphatic vasculature should have to deal
alone with the effete lymph resulting from tissue waste.
We are warranted in assuming, therefore, that this is
effected by the same cell and fibre distributive and
circulative machinery, as that by which the corpuscular
metabolic elements are circulated and distributed. The
existence of such restricted and safeguarded blood-circula-
tory provisions obviate the occurrence of admixture of
physiologically pure haemal lymph, with effete and nox-
ious tissue lymph, and secures the performance of the
process of nutrition in an unincumbered and aseptic
manner.
Furthermore, in the economy of aeration or oxygenation
of the blood, we have become convinced that we have a
great supplementary respiratory mechanism in the system or
pneumatic spaces occupying the face and base of the skull,
a series of spaces which, besides that of respiratory supple-
mentation, no doubt perform most important mechanical
and other offices. These spaces are generally symmetrical
in topographical arrangement, and conform to a uniform
general plan of anatomical disposition, but, in individual
cases, depart considerably in both respects from these
conditions ; they are lined by a very thin mucous mem-
brane, which, therefore, easily lends itself to the occurrence
of osmosis and chemical interchange between the air
occupying them and the blood circulating in their walls,
by diffusion and consequent synthetic and analytic re-
arrangement of the elements occupying the respective
areas. In such, what we would call conspicuous,
seemingly purposive, arrangements, who can fail to
recognise that we have here an adaptation of the prin-
ciple of respiratory function to the local wants of the
principal vital organs and structures of the body? and,
therefore, that we are warranted in claiming their special
local anatomical dispositions and arrangements as supple-
mentary or cephalic lungs , and that they must perform
functions proportionately important in the great function
of blood purification in connection with central nervine
function, cerebral and peripheral ? Moreover, the close-
ness of the anatomical relationship between these cephalic
lungs and the overlying brain structures, lends support
ON RESPIRATION 515
to the further opinion that circulatory immediateness and
availability are here the counterparts of each other, and
therefore, instead of being accidental and negligible, these
contiguous textural and organic arrangements must be
regarded as important structural features and parts of a
great biological design, the full proportions and beauty of
which are still hid from view, although, when seen from
certain points, it becomes " dimly visible " and profoundly
suggestive.
The physiological results of cephalic blood aeration
and oxygenation must thus involve local chemical and
physical changes of an importance to the brain, and
connected nervous system, comparable in many respects
to those effected by pulmonary aeration and oxygenation
in the metabolism of the body generally, and, therefore,
the integrity of the local anatomical structures and their
functional wholeness become essential in relation to the
proper performance of man's highest psychological and
neural work. The so-called trivial affections of these
somewhat neglected air-chambers and subsidiary respira-
tory regions thus become morbid entities of great
importance, whose treatment it behoves us to place on
a more scientific basis than that on which we have
hitherto been content to apply it.
EXTRACT XLVIII.b.
ON RESPIRATION, AND ATMOSPHERIC AIR.
Atmospheric air is as essential for the maintenance of
life as food itself ; indeed, it may be called a food with
strict scientific accuracy, inasmuch as it is engaged, in all
metabolic processes, in carrying into the intra-structural
voids, by means of its oxygen, the elements of tissue
protoplasm, and in carrying out the elements of broken-
down and effete tissue elements. In this chemico-physio-
logical work it may be said to resemble in its modus
operandi the physical work performed in the economy of
circulation by the physical element water, and like it, it
is universally present throughout the areas of the globe,
wherever life, in all its higher forms, is functionally active.
Vegetable and animal life take from, and add to, the
" sum and substance " of atmospheric air their respective
nutritive and refuse gaseous elements, in such manner
and quantity as to maintain, by the law of gaseous
diffusion, an equable distribution of its dual life-
supporting elements, and so, by a principle of reciprocity,
the two great kingdoms of nature co-exist, and perform
their respective functions, in the great laboratory of
nature, in biological harmony.
Could the quantity of air taken into the respiratory
organism of a human being, in the course of a definite
period, be accurately weighed or measured, it would be
found to bear a proportion to the quantity of solid and
liquid food consumed, little, if at all, inferior materially,
and perhaps of as great dynamic importance, in the
economy of metabolism.
ON RESPIRATION 517
Respiration, therefore, becomes a function of equal
physiological importance with alimentation, and of even
greater immediate imminence in the economy of life,
since its rhythmic continuity is essential, every few seconds
of time, to meet the demands of the blood streams as
they circulate through the capillary elements of the
respiratory mucosa — that mucosa embracing the linings
of the nasal passages, the pneumatic spaces of the head
and face, or the cephalic lungs, the larynx, trachea,
bronchi, bronchioles, and pulmonary vesicles.
It must be borne in mind that the whole extent of the
submucous capillary blood vasculature of the air-passages
partakes in the performance, to a greater or lesser extent,
in accordance with the thickness or thinness of the epi-
thelium, in the phenomena of oxygenation or arterialisa-
tion of the blood, and that the "cephalic lungs "
especially, from the diaphanous condition of their lining
membranes, afford very great facilities for respiratory gas
exchange and local blood purification, with consequent
vital effects on the superimposed cerebral structures.
Each inspiration and expiration balances the other, and
constitutes an act of respiration, but how different, in
the chemical and physical character of their respective
gases and vapours, they are ! Inspiration passing in, it
should be, the purest of air to the exposed blood, while
expiration receives, for elimination, the residual gaseous
products of chemico-physiological activity and tissue
waste.
The first respiration and the last mark the beginning
and end of independent life, and form the terminal
extremities of that longer or shorter " breath of life"
which constitutes the " span " of human existence. As
the vehicular requirements of the process of nutrition are
met by the principle of aqueous circulation of material
plasma, in mass and in molecule, so are its specific final
metabolic phenomena met by the physiologico-chemical
activities of atmospheric air, and the structural integrity
and life of the tissues maintained in normal physiological
condition, material and dynamic, by its oxydising and
de-oxydising influences in the processes of tissue integra-
tion and disintegration.
yi 8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Oxygen, being held in mere suspension by the other
elements of the atmosphere, is immediately available for
the chemical phenomena of metabolism, without the
necessity of antecedent chemical disunion, and so can
effect, from the moment of its introduction into the blood
stream, those changes in its chemico-physiological con-
dition constituting the transmutation of the venous into
arterial blood, with all the subsequent changes involved
in the subsequent re-conversion of the arterial into
venous blood. Whether the other ingredients of atmos-
pheric air subserve any purpose in the effecting of aeration
of the blood, and the performance of metabolic function,
is yet unproved ; but the inference is at least legitimate
that they are not altogether devoid of physiological or
chemical influence in the complex processes of haemo-
genesis and nutrition, as, in all great and small natural
processes, no element in their performance is without
its effect, negative or positive, and, therefore, we may
believe that here we have to do with no exception to the
rule ; hence, science must still pursue her enquiries into this
comparative terra incognita of chemico-physiology.
As we have said, the physical element of water, and the
chemical element of oxygen, pursue analogous courses in
the process of nutrition — the former dissolving or sus-
pending, and the latter chemically combining with, the
elements of the nutritive pabulum submitted to the
exhausted tissues, each combining with the other in
carrying out the complex details of the materio-dynamic
process of tissue waste and repair.
Water thus constitutes the circulating medium in
which the supply of fresh nutritive materials are con-
veyed to the worn and wasted tissues, while oxygen
constitutes the intrinsic element of chemical currency by
which the problems of exchange are effected in the
disposal of new for old tissue constituents.
In the cryptic process of metabolism we are yet far
from knowing exactly what takes place, and how its
details, chemical and physiological, are effected, as well
as what constitutes the line of normal procedure or
absolutely healthy action, and what may be looked upon
as an altogether pathological departure from the standard
ON RESPIRATION 519
■of health, dynamic and material, or both. As to this
latter aspect of the matter, however, it is impossible to
think, although we may have had what we consider ocular
demonstration, that the dynamic and material conditions
can be altered independently of each other, so we must
universally regard them as complementary of each other,
and as mutually essential for the making up of any and
every vital procedure, be it physiological or chemical, or
both, and that, therefore, their simultaneous occurrence is
implied in all instances of departure from the normal, as
well as abnormal, standard.
Defective or impure air supply presupposes, therefore,
the defective performance of metabolism, with material
and functional defect in the physiological condition of
vitality in all its phases, material and dynamic, in propor-
tion to the extent and continuance of the aerial defect or
impurity, and in degree varying from the non-perceptible
to the incidence of the most advanced non-oxygenation or
haemal autotoxis. The immediate and remote effects,
therefore, of the due performance of respiration "loom
largely " as etiological factors in the incidence of a large
area of diseased conditions, and as a determining influence
in human happiness and individual usefulness in the affairs
of the world and the progress of civilisation and human
destiny. Thus it behoves the individual and the nation
to endeavour to make the supply of atmospheric air as
absolutely pure and undefiled as nature originally provides
it, so as to secure one great health-giving element in all
human and vital concerns generally, and the element,
above all natural elements, in the maintenance of the
health and happiness of the human race and the whole
animal kingdom. Air, pure air, and plenty of it, must,
therefore, ever be sought after as a means of preserving
the health of the individual and the nation, besides
retrieving the disasters of malaSration so frequently ob-
served at the present day throughout the length and
the breadth of the land, which are at present calling
aloud for aid to both the laity and the profession of
medicine.
Air is provided by nature ; food, including water and
clothing, are the only other human requirements for the
520 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
purpose of life, and ought to be universally available. We
must, therefore, use every means within our power, both
individually and nationally, in order that these should be
put within the reach of all who make a legitimate effort to
acquire them, and who, when these legitimate efforts fail
in procuring them, may be assisted in obtaining them, so
as to leave as small a residuum of absolute idlers as
possible to be dealt with otherwise.
It has been said on the highest authority that " man
does not live by bread alone " ; what he does live by,
therefore, in addition to those means which he ought to
be able to provide, is the " free air " of heaven, and that
he ought to have in as pure a condition as it is possible
to supply it by all the means within the reach of civilised
man to procure it, so that ultimately there may be placed
within the reach of every member of the great human
family the complete means of maintaining life in comfort,
if not in happiness.
Pure air is the enemy of disease, the corner-stone of
the foundation of health, and the great upholder of life
in all its advanced phases ; as ablution and cleanliness are
next to godliness, so is, and much more, pure air to the
health, bodily and mental, of man. The gospel of the
provision of the necessaries of life must, therefore, be
associated with the gospel of cleanliness, and all that is
sweet and of " good report," to the end that all that is
peculiarly desirable in the individual and the community
may follow as the great progress of cause and effect evolves
itself in ever-increasing degree of perfection of result, and
more and more wide-spreading and all-embracing univer-
sality of incidence.
EXTRACT XLIX.a.
ON THE OSSEOUS COVERINGS OF THE CENTRAL
NERVOUS SYSTEM.
A system of the importance to the vital well-being of
the individual organism, such as the systemic nervous
system undoubtedly is, would seem to require for its
accommodation, support, and protection, a hollow osseous
structure, stable enough to afford a material foundation
on which it can rest, and yielding enough to permit of
a certain measure of movement of its component parts
to meet the requirements of the remainder of the
osseous skeleton, to which it is articulated in relation
to position, locomotion, and prehension. This hollow
osseous structure is provided in the skull and spinal
column, and is developed, by a process of ossification,
from a series of central points laid down in the
embryonic matrix surrounding the nascent central nerve
elements.
That part of the bony structure of the body here
referred to is the earliest to be laid down of the skeletal
framework, in and around which the soft structures com-
posing that body can grow, or are developed, with safety
and regularity in obedience to the laws of development
and evolution. The structure of the bones of the skull
is a compound of originally separated cartilaginous or
membranous and independent osseous units, but finally
of a closely articulated and continuous osseous enclosing
envelope, and consists of an outer and inner more or less
solid framework, with a central spongy or porous diploe ;
this latter, in the case of the skull bones, terminating in,
522 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
or blending with, the air spaces of the base of the skull
and upper bones of the face.
In this latter anatomical arrangement, we think, is
provided a means of external drainage of the intra-cranial
lymph spaces through the patent mechanism afforded by
the Pacchionian bodies on their traversing the inner table
of the skull and cancellous texture of the overlying diploic
and it may be to some extent the outer table and peri-
cranium, hence the growth of " wens," etc.
Thus, this osseous encasement affords both protection
and support of the most substantial character to the
central nervous system, while at the same time it provides
facilities for a supplementary lymph drainage system by
which the exigencies of intra-cranial pressure can be met,
and, it may be, neutralised, on the principle of " give and
take," or " tidal fluctuation," so to speak.
EXTRACT XLIX. b.
ON THE MENINGEAL COVERINGS OF THE BRAIN
AND SPINAL CORD.
The meninges of the brain and spinal cord, with the
neurilemmar coverings of the nerves, being so intimately
connected with the nerve structures proper, and with the
economy of their lymph circulation, call for a word of
description, in order to provide for a more complete
continuity of view of the broken subjects, although, we
hope, somewhat connected narrative of our studies. The
most external of these meningeal coverings, the dura
mater^ so named from its dense and unyielding texture,
lines the cranial cavity, to the bones of which it is most
intimately united by a thick-set series of fibrous projections,
and constitutes the internal periosteum of the skull ; at
different points of the ridges and surfaces, of which it
splits up to form the venous channels or sinuses, and
projects itself under and between the various divisions
and hemispheres of the cerebrum and cerebellum, the
proper anatomical position and relationships of which it
largely assists in maintaining — after which it leaves the
cranial cavity by way of the foramen magnum ^ where its
external layer becomes continuous with the pericranium,
while its internal layers are continued along the spinal
canal to its extremity, whence it is emitted as the sub-
stance and enclosing layer of the structure known as the
filum terminate, until, as we think, its junction with the
glandular body denominated coccygeal. Throughout all
this extent its texture is histologically continuous, being
one and indivisible, save for the numerous openings, or
524 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
foramina, provided in it for the passage of nerves and
blood-vessels — which openings, however, are not to be
recognised as openings in the strict sense of the word,
but as peripheral or lateral continuations of the dural
membrane. Thus, it is obvious we have to deal here
with a meningeal texture, continuous from its inception,
as the lining and covering respectively of the cerebral
and spinal cavities and their contained structures, to its
termination in the neurilemmar sheaths and spaces, where
the nerve terminals or arborisations constitute its external
or peripheral boundary. It goes without saying, there-
fore, that the spaces enclosed by it must be equally
continuous, and that the fluid contents which circulate
therein or therethrough, must in turn conform in their
movements or circulation to their solid environments.
The second meningeal texture, the arachnoid, the
individuality of which is explained away by some authori-
ties, follows the anatomical disposition and distribution
of the first or dura mater with undeviating regularity,
and is underlaid by a space of like regularity and con-
tinuity, the fluid contents of which are possessed of the
same or even greater facilities of circulation than are
those of the sub-dural space. These two meninges are
sparingly vascular, their functional role being mainly
mechanical, or supporting and protecting, hence fibrous
tissue constitutes the main portion of their substance,
their inter-spaces being lined or overlaid by endothelial
or epithelial cell investments.
The third meningeal texture, the pia mater \ is entirely
different from the two just described, in histological
character being highly vascular and supported by abun-
dance of fibrous tissue, it intimately connects itself with
the surrounding arachnoid — as the arachnoid connects
itself with the overlying dura mater — and with the fibrous
meshes of the underlying neuroglial matrix of brain and
cord. It is anatomically continuous, therefore, as a
covering or envelope, with the peripheral layer or cortex
of the brain and cord, as well as with the endoneurium
of the nerves and textures carrying the vascular supplies,
by which the neuroglial matrix is maintained and the
pabulum of the nervous system proper is supplied.
MENINGEAL COVERINGS 525
Besides, however, supplying nourishment for the nerve
structures, it is instrumental in excreting, or exuding,
into the cavities surrounding the central nervous system
in all their wide extent, as well as by its attached choroid
plexuses into the cavities inter-penetrating the brain and
cord, a fluid which has received the name of the cerebro-
spinal fluid, and a fluid the functional role of which is
of the greatest value in safeguarding the delicate textures
composing the central as well as the peripheral nervous
system, and of aiding and permitting the uninterrupted
performance of the complex functions, mechanical as well
as physiological.
We would remark that the functional role of these
meningeal coverings or membranes is also of the highest
order, that they perform the important offices within the
head and spinal canal of the protection, support, and the
affording of facilities for the conveyance of material for
nutrition, as well as facilities for the removal of effete
matter for excretion from the vitally important organs
within their cavities, while they accompany in unbroken
continuity every nerve which leaves them. They more-
over, between their folds and within their inter-spaces,
afford room for the collection of pools, columns, or
layers of cerebro-spinal fluid, which become the buffers
and liquid supports of the most delicate and impression-
able organisms contained within the human body.
The outer or dura mater is most adherent on its
attached, or outer, surface, hard and strong throughout its
substance, and covered with a silkily smooth and glistening
surface on its inner, like a wall of cartilage. The arach-
noid membrane belies not its name ; a peculiarity attaches
to it, however, which to us seems to betoken that it may
take part in the work of excretion from within the head
and which is this — along the immediate neighbourhood
of the longitudinal sinus on either side on the roof of
the skull, as well as on other parts, a series of small
organisms called " Pacchionian bodies " are observed,
consisting of duplications or projections of the arachnoid
membrane, which penetrate the overlying dura mater and
bone, at least its vitreous table reaching the diplo'e, or
even beyond. These bodies seem almost glandular, and
526 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
act as so many percolators, through which an over-
compressed cerebro-spinal fluid can find its way out of
the cranial cavity into the porous substance of the
superimposed bones. In the closely clinging pia maier
the blood-vessels are conveyed which nourish and sustain
the cerebral and spinal nervous structures. Thus is pro-
vided a series of structures of most beautiful texture, and
most elaborate design and detail, to ensure the safety and
nutrition of the most wonderful living mechanism known
to science.
EXTRACT XLIX.c.
ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD WITHIN
THE HEAD.
The circulation of the blood, apart from the circulation
of the lymph, within the skull, is a subject on which a
great deal might be said, but it may suffice merely to
draw attention to it by a few references. To begin with
the arterial, it may be remarked that, when once inside
the skull, the great arterial trunks break up freely,
anastomose largely, and altogether distribute themselves
so as to secure the most complete and guarded supply of
blood to every part and section of the cerebral textures,
the two sides uniting and commingling their supplies,
so as to take advantage to the full of the principle of
anastomosis, and to secure an equal distribution of the
vital fluid. The basilar vessels are secured from mechani-
cal pressure and impediment to circulation by the presence,
throughout every space and inter-space not occupied by
proper nervine or meningeal structure, of the ubiquitous
cerebro-spinal fluid, and superficially on the walls and
crown, by the hollowing of the inner plate of the cranial
bones for each artery, so that, when everything is normal,
not even arterial pulsation is felt by the sensorium, and
the vessels are at liberty to expand and contract without
interfering with the freedom of cerebral material move-
ment or function. This is explained and secured by the
existence, throughout the whole arterial vasculature of the
brain, of a peri-vascular spaceage, identical with it in
distribution, in which circulates the cerebro-spinal fluid,
accommodating itself to every pulsation and to every
528 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
movement of the vaso-motor economy of the vessels,
so that, whenever expansion of their lumina takes place,
that fluid runs out of, and when contraction ensues, it
runs into, that spaceage, whenever and wherever deter-
mined by local movement, thus maintaining a condition
of equal pressure on the blood vasculature on the one
hand, and on the proper cerebral textures on the other.
Hence the arteries are said to enter the brain proper
" naked " or uncovered by their usual adventitial textures;
moreover, they are unaccompanied by veins, and pursue
their lonely course through the brain matrix, terminating
as usual in the capillaries, which lend themselves to the
transfusion of their contents into the neighbouring
neuroglial substance, and do not turn on themselves, but
continue their course until they join the venules, which
latter, in turn, converge to form the great venous
receptacles called sinuses. The sinuses are not veins, in
the structural sense of the term, but irregularly shaped
hollows, constituted by splittings and foldings of the
meninges at their attached margins, and in some of their
free expansions. They, therefore, are not contractile, but
are protected from mechanical pressure from the brain
structures to which they are related locally, by being
placed where these brain structures are discontinuous, as
they are wherever the meninges are specially attached to
the calvarium ; a truly remarkable provision for taking
advantage of the splitting up of the meningeal layers of
structure, and at the same time placing the sinus cavities
in a position as absolutely free from pressure and circu-
latory impediment as can be secured within the skull.
It may therefore be said, with all truth, that the most
important organ of the body is lodged in an ideally
protected and constructed skeletal cavity, supplied with
" observatory ". adjuncts of the most marvellously perfect
character, and has its food supply secured and supervised
by the most perfectly working means which it is possible
for the human intelligence to appreciate — all which testify
to the great responsibility which rests on the central
nervous system to make the best and the utmost use
of the situation. It may be conceded, however, in
relation to a great part of the lesser, and even more,
CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 529
intense forms of human suffering, ailments which have
not a name beyond that of the general one of " headache,"
that the condition of the cerebral circulation is largely
responsible for them, together with interference with the
local and general circulation and excretion of the cerebro-
spinal fluid, and the condition of the blood itself with
regard to chemical and physiological purity ; and, of
course, this is not meant to refer to those forms of
headache symptomatic of definite diseased conditions or
morbid entities.
The popular condition known as " headache M may,
therefore, from this point of view, have a light thrown
upon it which should be of use in indicating the line of
conduct and the treatment, if any, which is most likely
to afford that relief, so much longed for, to its subjects
who usually suffer long and frequently from it. Its causes
being thus very often merely mechanical and chemical, the
simplest means may often suffice to afford relief, and
when once these have been discovered and adopted,
recourse to them becomes habitual, and by and bye the
condition ceases to recur.
Of course, for conditions involving the textural con-
dition of the intra-cranial contents, each condition requires
to be considered and dealt with on its own merits.
2 L
EXTRACT L.a.
ON THE "PNEUMATIC SPACES" OF THE HEAD AND
FACE, AND THE OLFACTORY NERVES AND MUCOSA.
The anatomy and physiology of the pneumatic spaces,,
so called, and the olfactory apparatus lie at the foundation
of this series of studies.
It appears to us that the pneumatic spaces, so called,
of the head and face fulfil : frst, a mechanical purpose
by lightening the osseous structures of the facial and
cephalic skeleton ; second, they render more yielding the
floor of the skull and points of entrance and exit of the
cephalic nerves and blood-vessels ; third , they give facilities
for the conduction and modulation of sound ; and fourth,
they minimise the effects of shock or concussion on the
cephalic contents by affording, so to speak, an air-cushioned
chamber for their safe lodgment. In this connection they
may also be said to afford a means of modifying and
mellowing the quality and tone of the voice — making it
more or less cavernous, sonorous, or in reality antral.
Amongst the physiological functions subserved by them
may be enumerated the following, viz. a surface, for the
chemical interchange, or exit and entrance, of gases or
liquids, which may leave it or become vapourised and
join the air currents in the nasal-pharyngeal cavities, thus
providing a subsidiary breathing apparatus, as it were, for
the head, face, and neck ; so that, when the contents of
the cephalic cavity cannot be sufficiently aerated and
purified through the ordinary channels of exit and
entrance, a safety valve is thus provided, or opened,
and a supplemental oxygenating agency supplied to
"PNEUMATIC SPACES" 531
prevent disaster, while a see-saw, or compensatory agency,
may thus be established between the cutaneous surface
of the face and head and the lining membrane of these
cavities, whereby pressure on the encephalon is obviated
under circumstances in which that pressure might be
liable to disturbance ; thus a simple " pallor of the
cheeks " may be followed and counterbalanced by a
"delicate blush," the "marble blanch of profound shock "
by a u scarlet suffusion," compensation being effected by
the alternate opening and closing, or vice versa, of the
appropriate external and internal blood channels — external
and internal sweating, alternately cutaneous ly and naso-pharyn-
geally, may in like manner, and for like purposes, occur.
We have in such provisions, therefore, supplemental
intra-cranial pressure safeguards and protections in these
environments of the cranial contents.
It may also be here stated, that the sounds produced
and the minute shocks conveyed by the process of
mastication, as well as the noise created by the acts
of deglutition and phonation, seem to be softened down,
and made more bearable for the organs of sense and the
brain above.
The anatomical and histological aspects of the subject
of the olfactory nerves and their use as an excretory
mechanism, having elsewhere been pretty fully dealt
with, we have, therefore, on this matter, only a few
observations to make in supplement. It is said that
the olfactory trunks, which are hollow in many animals
throughout life, and in the human species up till adult
age has been nearly reached, become closed, as life advances
beyond that period. This may be so, but we apprehend
that closure, so called, is only clogging, and hence a matter
of degree ranging between partial patency and complete
occlusion.
This view may be sufficient to account for the frequent,
we might almost say the copious, and regular nasal dis-
charge in the young, and the comparative absence of it,
at least the more fluid part of the discharge, in the
grown-up and aged.
Thus, we perceive that the very active period of life,
when the nervous system is most plastic, and when
S3?* BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
muscular movement is most constant and violent, an
outlet is provided by which waste products are allowed
to run off most directly and easily, in order to the
saving of the more distant emunctories, or outlets, such
as the sweat glands and the coccygeal excretory apparatus.
We thus see — it may be somewhat imperfectly — that
the comparative freedom of childhood and youth from
the incidence of such diseases as rheumatism, in all its
varieties, may be due to the patency of the olfactory
excretory organism, and that advancing age accounts for
the prevalence of such diseases by the gradual clogging
up of that organism, and the consequent delegation of
this part of the excretory functions of the nervous
system to the pituitary outfall, the cutaneous and other
surfaces, as well as to the before-mentioned coccygeal
glomerulus and associated parts.
All this seems the more probable because, as the power
to take physical exercise decreases with advancing age,
the effete products of neuroglial disintegration and nervine
" tear and wear " accumulate in the cerebro-spinal lymph
of the body, and not finding an exit by the skin, which
has to a great extent ceased to carry on its active
functions of excretion or diaphoresis, begin to act as
pathological presences, both within and without the
proper nerve structures, interfering with their vital
processes, and acting as mechanical impedimenta.
In connection with olfactory excretion some mention
ought perhaps to be made of snuff-taking.
Snuff-taking, in its physiological bearings, may to some
extent be understood, when considered in connection with
the application of these views.
Thus snuff, which is a narcotic irritant, when brought
in contact with the Schneiderian membrane, induces in
the unaccustomed indulger of the habit more or fewer
violent acts of sneezing, with copious nasal discharges,
and in the seasoned devotee the concluding stage of the
above process, and the gratification of a much enjoyed
habit, with the result that the olfactory and surrounding
structures are relieved, and this relief is followed by a
greater or lesser relief to the tension of the cerebro-spinal
cavity that may exist.
"PNEUMATIC SPACES " 533
Hence the snuffer, or snuff-taker, when he wants to
cogitate deeply, helps himself to his much-loved pinch.
In further connection with the subject of snuff-taking,
as conducing to the unloading of the cerebro-spinal cavity
of its surplus fluid contents, and thus aiding in the work of
the senses and intellect, it might be asked if it might not
thus indirectly aid in the excretion of such morbid products
as the materies morbi of rheumatism, and whether, there-
fore, snuffers are less afflicted with that and kindred
diseases than are non-snuffers ?
Snuffers may be said to induce artificial sweating from
the olfactory mucous membrane.
As bearing on the anatomy and distribution of the
olfactory nerve fibres an and on the dog's nose, and a large
number of the lower animals of that and other species, it
would be most interesting, and it might be useful to know,
whether the membrane or skin reflected over the point of
the nose contained terminal fibrils of the olfactory nerve,
and, consequently, the sense of smell, or whether its range
of sensory power is purely tactile.
We might almost be warranted, however, in inferring
from what we observe in the dog, and a very large number
of the mammalia, that the structure in question is per-
meated by terminal fibres of the olfactory nerve, or other
nerve elements capable of appreciating certain qualities of
matter, odoriferous or otherwise, whereby they are enabled
to select their food with greater ease and exactitude, and
even to perceive with less effort distant objects, provided
these objects are shedding odorous particles.
This covering, or nasal cap, seems to be a mucous, or
modified mucous, membrane, continuous with that of the
nasal passages, and being generally moist, it may be, from
that continuity, it presents a surface to which floating
particles of matter readily adhere, and from which nervous
molecular impressions are conveyed to the sensorium.
This surface, therefore, becomes a part, and may be
called the " advanced guard," of the proper sense of smell
in its relationship to environment.
A somewhat similar office appears to be served by the
lips in connection with the sense of taste.
EXTRACT L. b.
ON THE LACHRYMAL GLANDS.
The lachrymal glands seem to us to uesemblethe coccygeal
gland in anatomical texture, and, like it, to constitute a
part of the great "system" of excretory organs for emptying
or running off, by their functional exercise, the super-
abundant fluid contents of the cerebro-spinal lymph spaces.
At least this constitutes part of the function of these glands,
and is operative when the necessity arises, as in over-
distention of these lymph spaces, or on occasion of glandular
activity, such as may arise in weeping ; another part of
their glandular function being, when fluid cannot be drawn
from cerebro-spinal sources, the extraction by the proper
gland structures of the appropriate materials from their
blood supply or contents which can be resorted to, to meet
any temporary necessity. Thus, the constant necessity of
maintaining an uninterrupted supply of appropriate fluid
for lubricating and other purposes is met and ensured by
these double sources of supply, the neural and haemal, in
the important structures constituting and surrounding the
orbital and auditory, and, by similar means, the anal orifices
of the body. In textural arrangements and anatomical
characteristics these glands, the lachrymal and coccygeal,
closely resemble each other, the great difference being that
the lachrymal are symmetrically disposed on the two sides
of the body to meet the requirements of its two sides,
while the coccygeal gland is centrally situated to afford an
outlet to the single posterior termination of the spinal
cord, the filum terminale. The anterior and double and
the posterior and single glandular structures here men-
ON THE LACHRYMAL GLANDS 53S
tioned are, therefore, determined, both as to situation and
number, by the anatomical necessities of their positions and
functions in relation to the central cerebro-spinal nervous
system.
EXTRACT LI. a.
ON THE ROOF AND FLOOR OF THE MOUTH, AND
THE TONGUE.
The roof of the mouth is a partly irregularly ridged and
partly smooth mucous membrane covered surface, against
which the upper surface of the tongue is more or less
constantly laid, and between whose surfaces there is
more or less constant friction, and consequent epithelial
denudation.
In the apposition of the surfaces a greater or lesser
degree of discomfort is experienced, unless a certain
amount of moisture is included in the inter-space. This
moisture may be obtained to a certain extent from the
surfaces themselves, or from the saliva flowing from
the ducts of the various glands opening into the cavity of
the mouth at various levels.
In the situation of the parts, as thus viewed, it will be
observed that the salivary ducts open into the mouth at
a lower level than that of the upper surface of the tongue
when opposed to the palatal roof; hence a difficulty is
experienced in keeping the appropriate amount of mois-
ture supplied when that organ is at rest in that position.
This apparent difficulty would be met, or would not
arise, were a sufficient supply always forthcoming from
either of the surfaces mentioned, and could it be available
in that condition — the condition of rest — or, for that part
of it, in any or all of their conditions.
As meeting this want, and affording this supply, we
are of opinion that we see it, and sometimes feel it, at
the slight eminence situated at the exit of the anterior
THE MOUTH AND THE TONGUE 537
palatine canal, behind the upper incisor teeth, where, to
our mind, the nasal floors, with the organs of Jacobson,
empty themselves by capillary openings in the extremities
of the ducts penetrating the canal. The organs of Jacob-
son empty themselves into the inferior nasal passages
just, or almost, over the entrance to the ducts known as
leading through the anterior palatine canal, and may, at
an early period of life especially, or when these ducts are
said to be patent, find a ready channel, or channels,
through which to gravitate, or be sucked, through capillary
tubes into the cavity of the mouth, exactly at the spot
required to meet the difficulty in question.
Terminating by somewhat capillary exits, the process
of evacuation of the ducts, or the flow of the fluid from
the nose through them, may be constant or interrupted,
according to the position, degree of dryness of the
surfaces, and whether they are opposed or unopposed,
as well as the changing necessities of the parts, arising
from whether they are at rest or in action ; it is accom-
plished, or attained, by the sucker-like action of the lingual
surface on or against the roof of the mouth when the
intervening air is expressed, as it is when the two sur-
faces, lingual and palatal, are intimately opposed to, and
then withdrawn from, each other, as is to be observed
during infant sucking, and many of the movements, infan-
tine and adult, peculiar to the lingual organ in its to and
fro apposition with the roof of the mouth. Who has not
noticed the great advantage and comfort of a preliminary
and timely moistening of the two surfaces in question
when the tongue has to be used for almost any purpose —
alimentary or linguistic, or even for passively "chewing
the cud of reflection."
In the economy of mastication and preparation of the
food for deglutition the roof of the mouth may be likened
to an inverted " nether millstone," against which, when
the food is being ground down by the teeth and insali-
vated by the various glands, the tongue is constantly
engaged triturating and reducing it to a pulp capable of
being swallowed and passed into the stomach in a condition
suitable for gastric digestion. The rigid surface of the
hard palate thus becomes a valuable asset in the economy
538
BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
of mastication and insalivation, lending itself to the break-
ing up of the solid, and the disintegration of the insali-
vated, food, thus affording a basis of passive resistance,
Fig. 132. — Papillary surface of the tongue, with the fauces and
tonsils. (From Sappey.)
1, 2, circumvallate papillae ; in front of 2, the foramen caecum ; 3, fungiform papilla; ;
4, filiform and conical papillae ; 5, transverse and oblique ranges ; 6, mucous
glands at the base of the tongue and in the fauces ; 7, tonsils ; 8, part of the epi-
glottis ; g, median glosso epiglottic fold or fraenum epiglottidis.
against which the tongue, by its serpentine muscular
powers, can successfully operate, making the intervening
alimentary pulp yield and attenuate until the required
degree of plasticity has been reached for it to be passed
THE MOUTH AND THE TONGUE 539
on to the pharyngeal musculature for easy degluti-
tion. The floor of the mouth is constituted of the
sublingual surfaces and encircling teeth and gums, but
more especially of the tongue itself (Fig. 132), which, in a
sense, may be looked upon as one of the most remarkable
and interesting organs of the body, whether we regard it
from a purely anatomical point of view or from that of
the services it performs in the economy of life and human
relationships. The teeth, the gums, the salivary glands,
and the lateral or buccal walls of the cavity of the mouth,
each and all perform most important functions in the
economy of alimentation, and in the work of enabling
the central organ of the mouth, the tongue, to perform
its manifold work with the maximum of facility and the
minimum of difficulty.
Besides the merely mechanical functions it performs in
this combined work, and the many important individual
purposes it subserves, we have become possessed, from
long observation and what study we could give the
subject, of the fixed ideas that a great central and indi-
vidual function of the tongue is the admixture of that
colloidal material represented by its fur with the com-
ponent parts of the food during the linguo -palatal
trituration, and that admixture of its fur with the food
represents a specific digestive function of a vitally
important and absolutely necessary character, inasmuch
as it is initial, and of large proportion, in the long chain
of chemico-physiological phenomena constituting digestion,
and what follows.
We have already elsewhere endeavoured to trace the
passage of pituitary debris from within the pituitary
outfall structures along the tonsillar bodies into the
tongue, and we have recognised in the capillary eminences
of the lingual mucosa the orifices of lingual excretory
ducts, necessitated by the existence in the tongue of this
residual cerebral debris or pituitary excretion, removed
hither for purposes of cerebral hygiene and neural or
neuro-systemic freedom, so to speak. Besides these im-
mediately important functions, basing our deductions on
analogies supplied within the alimentary canal throughout
its whole extent, and on the great axiomatic principle that
54o BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
everything capable of further use within the domain of the
organic work of the body continues to be utilised to its
fullest extent ere it be allowed finally to escape as altogether
effete and noxious, we venture to assert that the tongue,
like the gastric glandulature, the liver, the pancreas, and
intestinal glandulature, discharges into the passing food
elements a great digestive ferment^ whose function is to
reduce chemico-physiologically certain of these elements
Z.1*
Fig. 133. — Longitudinal vertical section of the tongue, lip, etc.
(From Kolliker and Arnold.)
w, symphysis of the lower jaw ; d, incisor tooth ; //, hyoid bone ; g h, genio-hyoid
muscle ; g, genio-hyo-glossus spreading along the whole of the tongue ; tr, trans-
verse muscle ; Is, superior longitudinal muscle ; g I, lingual glands ; /, lymphoid
crypts ; e, epiglottis ; /, section of the lip and labial glands ; o, cut fibres of the
orbicularis oris ; Im, levator menti.
in preparation for the subsequent stages of digestion.
What that function is is as yet hidden, and, therefore,
waiting decipherment, after which it cannot be doubted
that an instrument of utility will have been gained by the
clinician and dietetist of very great intrinsic value and
scientific importance and adaptability.
Viewed thus as a glandular receptacle, we may liken
the posterior two-thirds of the tongue to a sponge, into
which the residual pituitary discharge permeates from the
adjoining tonsillar bodies, one of whose functions is to
disseminate from their own external surfaces, in like
THE MOUTH AND THE TONGUE 541
manner with the tongue, a quantity of this pituitary
material, which no doubt becomes utilised for like diges-
tive purposes. The spongy texture of the tongue into
which the residual pituitary or tonsillar excretory material
percolates, is possessed of a fan-like musculature (Fig.
133), arising and radiating from its ossicles and posterior
inferior aspect, and inserting itself into the fibrous sub-
mucosal structures, which, on contracting, lessens the
universal area of the organ, with the result that its fluid
and plastic contents are emptied into the cavity of the
mouth through its papillary ducts, as the contents of a
sponge can be squeezed out by pressure. It, therefore,
follows that the act of mastication, which entails a con-
tinued contraction and relaxation of the tongue's muscu-
lature, must be attended by a fresh act of pituitary
excretion on every such exercise, and that synchronously
are, therefore, conducted the processes of dental trituration,
insalivation, and lingual fur admixture of the food. All
which processes must be regarded as absolutely essential
in this, the very first stage of digestion and alimentation,
for the preparation of the raw materials of that food for
the effective action of the succeeding digestive processes
and agencies to which they must be subjected, in order
to become available for the supply of the nutritive wants
of the body.
The tongue, so regarded, must consequently be classed
as a glandular organ, or rather as the final glandular
development in a series of glandular structures known as
the pituitary gland, the tonsils, and the tongue, whose
chief offices, in this relationship, consist in excreting from
the central cerebral organisms the results of neural tissue
waste, and in securing the utilisation of these in the
process of digestion in the manner, and with the intent,
of the other digestive materials poured into the alimentary
canal, at its various stages, by the other glandular develop-
ments subservient to that process.
EXTRACT LI. b.
ON THE TONGUE, AND WHAT IT INDICATES TO
THU CLINICIAN.
" Put out your tongue, please," is a request familiar to-
the ears of the frequenters of clinical establishments, and
at the bedsides of the seekers of relief and cure ; and why ?
Because information is sought, by the addresser of the
request, which can only be elicited from this source, and can
only be read in the light of inherited and acquired know-
ledge, by the descendants of iEsculapius and Hippocrates.
Viewed as a clinical tell-tale organ alone, the professors
of the healing art are much indebted to it for the passive
information which it is able to afford, apart from that
which they seek from it in other directions; it behoves
these professors, therefore, not to be satisfied with mere
" habit and repute " routine and empirical methods of
eliciting the information which they require, and which
can be obtained from this source alone, but to enquire
more deeply, more exhaustively, and rationally into the
structural foundations and functional conditions in which
these sources of information " take their origin," and from
which the abnormal morbid characters and signs observable
on this organ are evolved.
The tongue, when thus considered, is found to have an
individual as well as a collective character, which must
alwavs be recognised and allowed to have its weight when
the important procedure of diagnosis is in progress, and
which on all hands is found, more or less, to illumine that
most important proceeding, as well as to indicate the lines
of treatment and future trend of morbid progress, besides-
ON THE TONGUE 543
the rate of convalescence and the complete degree of
recovery of health attained. In reading and estimating
the characters imprinted on the tongue by nature and
disease respectively, we must include those of size, con-
sistency, colour, general appearance and arrangement of
papillary textures, local and general, presence or absence
of moisture, and local and general development of " fur,'r
and many other less prominent features of health and
disease. For our present purpose, however, it will be
sufficient if we deal with the last named, or " fur," as
being most intimately and generally connected with the
presence and effects of morbid processes or disease.
The development of "fur" is not confined to the con-
ditions of disease, but may be found naturally present in
many people in the possession of excellent health ; we
must, therefore, regard its presence or absence as a matter
of less than vital importance, but yet a lingual feature of
the greatest diagnostic importance in those cases wherein
its presence is unmistakably a symptom.
What, then, does " fur," or " furred tongue," signify in
the conditions of health and disease respectively ?
"Fur" in the healthy is usually a local white or
yellowish super-epithelial deposit or exudation — more
especially the latter — occupying the back and central two-
thirds or so of the tongue's upper surface, and generally
thicker in the centre and thinning towards the edges. As
we have remarked, it is mostly to be regarded as an exuda-
tion. An exudation from where ? and an exudation of
what ? you will ask. As an exudation, of course, it can
only come from the epithelial covering of the tongue, with
its multitudinous array of papillary cups, and communi-
cating or attached endothelium-lined ducts of sub-com-
munication. The part of the tongue furred is that on
which these papillary epithelial arrangements are most in
evidence, and we may, therefore, assume that the process
of exudation is more active here than elsewhere, and hence
may regard the prevailing natural local " fur " production
as being due to increased local accumulation of exudate,
with proportionately increased difficulty of its disintegra-
tion and detachment.
The exudate may be looked upon as mucous or mucoid
544 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
in composition, and of use in the many and various
activities in which the tongue takes a part. The produc-
tion of the large amount of this exudate or excretionary
material, which in the natural and healthy condition of the
tongue is constantly being formed and thrown off, requires
for its accomplishment not only an elaborate and extensive
machinery, but the readily available provision of a large
amount of raw and convertible or immediately available
material. In the tongue, therefore, we find, and more
especially within the meshwork of its muscular structure,
in its posterior and middle parts, a large amount of ill-
defined and amorphous pseudo- or semi-fatty deposit, which
could lend itself to the production of just such material as
is exuded by the epithelial membrane of the upper surface
of the tongue at its normally or naturally " furred part."
This assumption, we think, will supply the answer to your
second question, viz. the exudation of what ? The pres-
ence, in the greater part of the body of the tongue, of a
large amount of ill-defined or metamorphic material would
seem to indicate that that material is there for the purpose
of meeting a vital or nutritional local need, or of supplying
a " dumping ground " for the future disposal of a used-up
and semi-effete material, or both ; the former of these
indications we may regard as negatived by virtue of the
completeness of the vascular mechanism of the organ and
its perpetual activity in the most vital processes and every-
day work of life ; we must, therefore, fall back upon the
second indication, that the tongue supplies a " dumping
ground " for the future disposal of used-up and semi-effete
material ; and in answer to the question — the exudation of
what ? we would claim that this ill-defined and amorphous
inter-penetrating matricial element of tongue issue forms
the raw material of the exudate composing the substance
of what is known as tongue a fur."
Another link farther in our interrogations and en-
quiries will complete the chain we have been endeavouring
to forge, and will, we think, enable us to unite into a
harmonious system of exudation, or excretion, and circu-
latory disposal of katabolic cerebral material, a series of
circulatory acts or operations as complete and united in
their working as is to be found within the human system.
ON THE TONGUE 545
That concluding link is supplied by the anatomical and
histological union of the spongy excreting bodies known
as the tonsils, whose function we have elsewhere described
as cerebro-excretory, with the matrix of the tongue and its
abounding, amorphous, indefinite, semi-effete elements,
and the more or less wide and otherwise unoccupied inter-
flbro-muscular spaces. Here, then, we claim to see the
theatre of one of the concluding acts of the great cerebro-
excretory circulation and the final disposal of the residual
pituitary material, which finds its way into the pituitary
gland, and which in turn finds its way through the lateral
sphenoidal foraminal openings into the tonsillar bodies,
and thence into the amorphous and semi-adipose material
matrix, in the inter-muscular spaces of the tongue, where it
affords that semi-plastic and faintly fluid material in the
discharge of which the epithelial covering and papillary
structures of that organ are constantly engaged. Should
the truth of these contentions be established, and their
physiological importance in the economy of health become
a matter of orthodox belief, then it will follow that any
pathological departure from the normal structural or
functional conditions of the parts involved may become a
matter of supreme pathological moment and a morbid
entity of the greatest consequence — the recognition, there-
fore, of such a condition will be of proportionately great
importance, and a complete understanding of the normal
condition of the parts involved will become a sine qua non
in forming a diagnosis, in indicating the lines of treatment,
and in dictating a prognosis.
The display of a suspicious appearance, or an unmistak-
able departure from the normal condition on the part of
the tongue of its surface arrangements as to " fur," should
at once sound "a note of warning " to the observant
practitioner and indicate to him that a morbid process is in
embryo, or has already made progress along this pathological
way. Such displays may vary from the slightest suspicion
to the most fully developed example of the abnormal,
and their teaching and appreciation become a pathological
volume, which has continued to be added to, and more or
less scientifically read, since the foundation of the healing art.
The faint suspicion and the fully evolved example of
2 M
S^6 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
pathological " fur," as seen on the tongue, alike attest a
departure from the normal disposition of that " fur " in
anatomical situation and manner of arrangement as to
colour, depth, and consistency, usually dependent upon
the nature of the diseased condition on account of which
they occur, and the profundity of the local disturbances ;
thus a faint disturbance of the digestive system may only
be attended by the merest and most ephemeral formation
of " fur," while a suppurative tonsillitis, or quinsy, may
develop the deepest, and most lasting, of almost mem-
branous furs — each, however, being alike the consequence
of a more or less pronounced stasis of the cerebro-
excretory circulation, and a more or less delayed renewal
of the final excretory process, due, amongst other causes,
to blockage of papillary orifices and inspissation of the
excretory material, from osmotic escape of its more fluid
parts, through the textural elements of its enclosing and
related matrix and superimposed mucosa.
Should these views become a part of our orthodox
beliefs, it will again prove that our forefathers, in the art
of medicine, based at least one more of their methods of
eliciting diagnostic information and indications of treatment
on a strictly scientific, if empirical, foundation, and that
they were possessed in an eminent or high degree of that
professional acumen in reading pathological signs which
we are too apt to associate with modern men and times.
Since writing the above, we have been struck with the
ideas that excretion from the surface of the tongue of its
pituitary residuum must be greatly aided by the continual
conscious and unconscious " suction " to which it is
subjected in the thousand and one movements in which it
takes a part from the beginning to the end of life, the
papillary cups and their communicating ductules being
emptied and replenished more or less by every such exer-
cise ; and that the functional and material value of the
excreted material in the process of digestion is certain to
be discovered to be of the highest order ; a very slight
consideration of the circumstances involved in the admix-
ture of alimentary materials and glossopharyngeal mucus
at once suggesting the accomplishment of profound
digestive changes in the elements of food, liquid and solid.
EXTRACT LII.
ON THE PERINEAL RAPHE IN THE MALE.
We have not hitherto been able to secure an exhaustive
description of this structure in any of the anatomical
treatises with which we have been supplied. We, there-
fore, purpose considering shortly what it is, and what
purposes it serves to fulfil, anatomically and histologically.
Histologically it may be regarded as composed mainly
of elastic or flbro-elastic tissue, arranged somewhat in the
form of a broad fan-shaped band, extending from near
the anus posteriorly to the root of the penis anteriorly,
dipping into the perineal structures in its path across the
posterior and medial portions of the perineum, and thence
through or across the whole extent of the antero-posterior
diameter of the scrotum, and upwards through the whole
depth of that structure, finally attaching itself to the floor
of the pelvis, and thus dividing the perineum and scrotum
into two equal parts, sides, or halves.
Hereby, it will be perceived, a surface of central attach-
ment is afforded for the plentifully developed fibrous and
contractile, flbro-elastic, and muscular tissues of the peri-
neum, and a fulcrum, so to speak, secured, by which
these structures can operate in the contraction and
dilatation or relaxation movements of that region — such,
for instance, as are to be witnessed under the influence of
cold or heat, as in a hot or cold bath, when the former
relaxes the perineo-scrotal tissues, and the latter contracts
them, until the raphe stands out as a prominent band or
ridge, and the skin of the scrotum on either side of it is
drawn into a multitude of wrinkles.
548 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
This latter scrotal shrinkage or contractile phenomenon
may conceivably, under active functional circumstances,
aid in the forcible excretion or ejection of the testicular
contents.
The fibro-elastic and muscular fibres may be regarded
as mainly distributed in a double fan-shaped manner, so
to speak, over the two halves of the perineum, and
operating from the raphe centrally, both in its superficial
and deep extensions, they exercise the function of lessening
the superficial area of the scroto-perineal surface, and
hence must lessen the cubic quantity of the fluid and
plastic contents confined within it, including the testicular.
In fact, it would seem, or it might be inferred, that the
testicular organisms are encircled by these structures, and
that they are peculiarly under their influence mechanically
in all their phases of functional activity and inactivity.
We may, in connection with these remarks, regard it
as a strange coincidence that a raphe may also be observed
in the upper lip in certain people, as if to afford a more
firmly organised point of central attachment for the orbi-
cularis oris, in its function of contraction of the mouth
and upper lip ; but the occurrence, it seems to us, may also
point back to an early condition of threatened cleft in
embryonic or early foetal life.
The perineum may be regarded — if the foregoing views
be accepted — not as a complicated series of dependent
layers of structure only, adapted for a floor to the pelvis,
with its contained organs, but as a highly organised
arrangement of parts, with anatomical mechanisms, for
the control of the great exits from the body, and with
physiological structures and functions of the highest order
for the maintenance of health and the propagation of the
species.
Thus the functions of excretion from the cerebro-spinal
cavity, through the jilum terminate, coccygeal glomerulus,
and peri- and endo-anal " modified sweat glands," the
functions of intestinal evacuation and micturition, with
the associated functions of testicular evacuation or excre-
tion in the male and parturition in the female, and the
organisms by which these offices are effected, all find
the " theatre of their operations " on, within, and through
THE PERINEAL RAPHE 549
the textures of the perineum and associated anatomical
parts.
It was suggested that the ejection of the testicular
contents was, to a considerable extent, assisted by the
inherent contractile powers of the scrotal sac, owing to
a property of contractility, akin to that of muscle, with
which its component fibres are endowed, and which act
under the apparently combined nerve stimuli of the sym-
pathetic and systemic nervous systems.
The other great excretory acts in which the perineal
and adjacent structures have from time to time to be
engaged, viz. those in which the bladder and the bowel
are respectively engaged, if we patiently analyse them, will
be found to be similarly determined, although carried out
on their own distinctive lines, as determined by the
particular viscus involved, and, consequently, the nature
of the excretory acts. Occupying, as they do, the floor, or
most dependent part, of the human body, and, therefore,
the situation best adapted for the occurrence of the two
great functions of excretion proper, as well as the some-
what kindred functions of menstruation and exfoetation or
child-bearing, we find laid down on their supporting
textures a system of storage and disposal structures which,
for combined simplicity, complexity, perfection of struc-
tural arrangement, and the adaptation of " means to ends,"
may be regarded as unsurpassed in the whole array of
designs observable within the human economy.
Each of the viscera concerned, being a storage organ or
space of limited capacity, requires to be possessed of the
power of emptying itself when the limit of that capacity
has been reached. Consequently, we find that it responds
first to the unconscious influence of sympathetic nerve
impulse, due to afferent or sensory influence, and conse-
quent reflex or efferent stimulus, to the involuntary
musculature implicated, through the sympathetic nerva-
ture ; and, secondly, in consequence of this, to an appeal
to the systemic nervature, which brings to its aid the
connected voluntary musculature, wherever available,
throughout the abdominal walls, and even more distant
parts. This compound nerve disturbance, or sympa-
thetico-systemic nerve storm, and accompanying muscular
550 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
contraction of the combined striped and unstriped muscu-
lature, is usually effective in accomplishing its object, but
is sometimes attended or followed by a considerable
degree of exhaustion or collapse, which is suggestive of a
great expenditure of energy, nervous and muscular, and
at times an accompanying leakage of sympathetic nerve
energy into the systemic nerve and muscular structures,
which may be quite consciously felt and appreciated, more
especially throughout the lower extremities.
It might here be remarked that a singular parallelism
is established, but in inverse order, between the neuro-
muscular phenomena exhibited in the act of deglutition
on the one hand, and the acts of rectal and vesical
excretion and uterine contraction on the other, in the
former the systemic neuro-musculature initiating the
procedure, and in the latter, the sympathetic. These
combined systemico-sympathetic neuro-muscular activities
illustrate also the oneness as well as the duality of the
nervous systems, and the mutual or independent relation-
ships manifested by the combined nervous system in all
its more complicated physico-mental operations and
processes.
EXTRACT LIII.
ON THE PHENOMENON OF CILIARY MOVEMENT IN
THE CIRCULATION OF CEREBRO-SPINAL LYMPH,
AND OF AIR AND MATERIAL PARTICLES IN THE
LUNGS.
Whether ciliary movement of the lining membranes of
the early, and of even the later circulatory passages of the
embryo, always occurs as a phenomenon of circulatory
assistance, it is difficult to say, but it is true that the
phenomenon occurs during or in its latest stages of
growth, and becomes more and more obvious as early
fcetal life progresses. Thus, at that stage, when the
neurenteric canal becomes divided into neural and
enteric, and when the free and general circulation of
its enclosed lymph, which has hitherto been allowed to
occupy the whole lumen of the canal, gives place to a
very restricted circulation at the line of division, which
to some extent is compensated for by the opening up
of an anterior means of circulation and evacuation, by
which the narrowing lumen of the neural canal is
maintained in physiologically necessary patency and fluid
fulness, to meet the varying conditions and wants of
the evolving systemic nervature, cerebral and spinal,
there is noted a growth on the lining membrane of
the whole future cranio-spinal inter-spaces of a ciliary
prolongation of the surface cells, in order to aid in the
process of the, then comparatively passive, lymph circu-
lation.
In the ventricles and central canal of the cord, as they
become evolved by the increase of the true nervine
552 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
elements and the consequent shrinkage of the intra-
cerebro-vesicular cavities and the medullary canal,
gradually appear the ciliary projections on their lining
epithelium, as well as on that of the evolving coccygeal
gland and of the pituitary body on both ends of its
developing elements, i.e. both from within the infundi-
bulum on the one end and the buccal cavity on the other.
What does all this mean ? Simply, what the appear-
ance of a ciliary lining membrane always means, that it
has been developed or evolved for the purpose of aiding
and maintaining circulation along open passages or con-
stricted lumina, where gravitation, capillary attraction,
and other physical agencies require such assistance. We
must, therefore, recognise in this very early appearance
of this circulatory adjunct, that the principle of circulation,
wherever it has appeared, is the greatest function sub-
served by the cavities, or passages, involved, and that,
if it were necessary to use this fact as a histological
evidence of the claim, which we elsewhere advanced, for
the truth of cerebro-spinal lymph circulation and excretion,
we are absolutely entitled to it for such a purpose, for, no
doubt, were we meeting it " for the first time " in any
hitherto unknown line of research, we would be warranted,
nay, compelled, to give a reason for its existence.
Moreover, the occurrence of a pre-natal ciliary epithelium
on the lining membrane of the naso-pharynx, and the
glosso-cesophageal mucosa, speak of a continued passage
of material from the central brain spaces through the
intervening uniting structural media, established for the
great functional purpose of conveying into the stomach,
when deglutition was both structurally and functionally
impossible, the residual products of brain waste to become
part of the meconial mass occupying the alimentary canal,
when as yet no substance of an alimentary character had
been admitted thereto. At this stage of fcetal existence,
the greater part, or, it may be, the whole of the circu-
latory work between the cavities of the skull, the mouth,
the lungs, and the alimentary canal, is due to the action of
the ciliary epithelium and underlying mucosa of their
lining textures.
Post-natally, an alteration takes place in the lining
CILIARY MOVEMENT 553
membrane of the nares, mouth, pharynx, oesophagus,
stomach, and lungs, by which much of their ciliated
epithelium is modified or abolished, but the discharge
from within the cerebro-spinal cavity still continues to
be aided by it, until the clogging effects of advancing
life gradually usurp the conditions of early freedom and
physiological activity — so far as ciliary agency is concerned
— by which time the processes of mastication, insalivation,
pituitarisaticn, and deglutition are capable of effecting the
same end by more decidedly musculo-mechanical means
and superadded digestive agencies.
It is noteworthy, too, that such inter-current lymph
channels, as the lachrymal sacs and nasal ducts and the
Eustachian tubes become lined with a ciliary epithelium,,
so as to facilitate the movement of fluids, with dissolved
or suspended materials, through passages, or structures,,
which are not contractile, and hence are merely passive
and vehicular, in relation to their circulating contents.
Viewed thus, it becomes abundantly obvious, and in
fact absolutely evident, that no such thing as a cerebro-
spinal "shut sac" can possibly exist, but, on the contrary,
that a circulatory regime of a most apparent and " abso-
lutely adapted " character subsists throughout the whole
nervous system, by means of which the great desiderata
of fluid mechanical support, equalisation of intra-cranio-
spinal pressure, and physiological hygiene, are simul-
taneously secured and maintained, quite "in keeping'^
with the requirements of the great central or blood
circulation, and the many other minor and less apparent
circulations to be found throughout the human organism.
What more ideally adapted means for the keeping clear
of the cerebro-spinal lymph " highways and byways " than
the u sweeping apparatus " of an epithelial lining mem-
brane, the ciliary processes of which are in continuous
movement, with the result of regular forward progress
of the circulating fluid, and, it probably may be, its retro-
grade movement, when circulatory progression becomes
stayed or reversed ? Outside the " sphere of influence "
of the heart's impulse, when circulation is reduced to a
great extent to " vegetative " proportions and methods,
we see at work a most wonderful array of circulatory
554 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
•expedients, but none more structurally advanced, or more
■highly functioned, than that of the apparently " self-
determined " ciliary movements of the lining epithelial
and endothelial cells of the various passages, tubes, and
ducts, through which course air with suspended particles,
or fluids with dissolved or suspended matters.
EXTRACT LIV.a.
ON SOME OF THE SALIENT POINTS AND DEPARTURES
FROM ACCEPTED TEACHING INVOLVED IN THE
FOREGOING VIEWS: CIRCULATION.
These mainly group themselves around the doctrines of
circulation and nutrition, with the related subjects of
secretion and excretion, the histology of cell and fibre
generally, and that of the sympathetic and systemic nervous
systems particularly, the hydrostatics and hydrodynamics
of the lymph, or fluid called cerebro-spinal, of the central
cerebro-spinal nervous system and its related peripheral
and sympathetic extensions, and the bearing of them on
the causation and incidence of clinical and pathological
phenomena. Thus grouped, they pertain both to struc-
tural and functional matters, as observed in the human
organism in particular, but they are applicable to all dually
innervated and animated beings.
The principle of circulation determines the manner
of occurrence and sequence of all the materio-dynamic
phenomena of life, and is operative alike in the uni-cellular
ovum, in the embryo, and in the adult body ; in the
first by molecular movement on atomic lines ; in the
second by, or along, rudimentary vessels ; and in the third
through the agency of elaborated and organised vascula-
tures, the materials moving, or circulating, in the minutest
physical division, or as capillarv filtrate, in molecule, and as
vascular fluids, in mass, respectively, — these three methods
of distribution of organic pabulum or plasma being con-
jointly utilised for the accomplishment of the whole
phenomena of nutrition, including those of metabolism
556 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
proper, secretion, and excretion. Physiological chemistry
here works out, together with mechanical movement and
displacement, the complicated processes of tissue integra-
tion and disintegration by virtue of those affinities and
repulsions, so familiar to the students of matter directed
and determined by the dynamics of neural and general
life for vital, or organic, ends and purposes.
Circulation, as thus observed in the adult organism, in
the sequence of its events, culminating in the metabolism of
the tissues, is carried on through a series of vascular media,
consisting of the alimentary canal, the chyliferous vessels,
the blood-vessels, systemic and pulmonary, arterial and
arterio-capillary, cellulo-osmotic and inter-cellulo-fibral,
or anabolic, the whole series terminating in the completed
metabolic or nutro-integrative, the latter dovetailing
with and beginning the katabolic or nutro-disintegrative,
consisting of the capillo-venous, the venous proper,
the lymphatic, dextro-cardial, and pulmonary. These
vascular, or circulatory, media consist of a graduated
series of organised vessels of definite lumina of separ-
ating and uniting membranes with meshes permeable by
osmosis and of connecting fibres passable, or permeabley
by the nutritive plasma, and its residual or waste material
results.
The dynamics of highly organised forms of multi-cellular
life again emanate from, and are supplied and sustained,
uni- and multi-cellularly, by the two nervous systems — the
sympathetic and the systemic, their manner of application
to the vital necessities of the living organism being known
by the name innervation. This innervation may either be
systemic or sympathetic, individual or conjoined, according
as the requirements of the body for the time being neces-
sitate, and there is also good reason for supposing that
nerve energy can be drawn simultaneously, when necessary,
from one or the other, or both, as local and general vital
requirements necessitate for the time being.
Organic life is the peculiar field for the operation of
sympathetic innervation, while cerebral and cerebro-spinal
vital activity is the peculiar domain for the exercise of
systemic innervation, the former being uninterruptedly in
use from the beginning of life till its close, the latter only
CIRCULATION 557
in the waking condition of the body, or, say, two-thirds of
life only.
To enable the great neuro-dynamic generator and dis-
tributor, the brain and cord, or cerebro-spinal centre, to
perform its work, free from disturbance from without and
from within, it is housed, so to speak, in a disturbance-
proof retreat, within the domain, and under the influence
and innervation, of the sympathetic nervature, surrounded
and inter-penetrated by an aseptic and hygienic fluid,
which is responsive to every mechanical impression from
within and from without, and possessed of the power
mechanically to take up, and remove, all material residual
products, begotten of neuronal waste, or due to neuroglial
overplus from neuronal non-utilisation.
The hydrostatics and hydro-dynamics involved in the
local and general disposition of the cerebro-spinal fluid
within the sub-meningeal spaces, the cerebral ventricles,
the central canal of the cord, and inter-neurilemmar sheath
spaces of the nerves, sensory and motor, are nothing short
of the first importance in the maintenance of cerebro-
spinal and neuronal functional completeness and structural
integrity, as well as physiological hygiene, within the
precincts of the systemic nervous system, hence any local
•or general lapse, intrinsic or extrinsic, of them may lead
to the incidence of pathological phenomena, and the
development of clinical or morbid entities.
While the disturbed hydrostatics and hydro-dynamics
of the cerebro-spinal fluid may thus give rise to mechanical
-conditions, productive of pathological and clinical results,
alterations in physical and chemical qualities and bacterial
interferences with its essential characteristic of asepticity
may originate a category of diseased conditions nothing
less than astounding, which, therefore, calls aloud for
the closest study of those engaged in the fields of practical
neurology and psychological medicine.
In whatever part of the organism we may study the
phenomena of circulation, we will find that the primary con-
dition of physiological health therein is based on the constancy
of that circulation in its normal ordered and forward flow
or movement, and that the first sign of pathological change
is found in, or to emanate from, stasis, or regurgitation,
558 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
a condition which necessarily affects ultimately the vitality
and health of the area involved in the occurrence, and
also, necessarily, the neighbouring areas so far as their
histological continuity and functional relationships deter-
mine. The same doctrine holds good whether we regard
circulation in its uni-cellular, multi-cellular, or organically
and viscerally grouped aspects, and points to the absolute
necessity of, at all times, discovering its locale, and secur-
ing the patency of the channels beyond, or ahead, of the
site of stasis or regurgitation, and thus of providing a
way of normal progress for the circulating materials,
whether they be nutrient or effete, so as to allow of the
effects of the temporarily evolved morbid incidents to be
effectually dealt with by the vis medicatrix nature.
When this has taken place, and all the circulatory media
being, or having become, unexceptionable, we shall be pre-
pared to see, so far as circulation can determine, a condi-
tion of perfect functional work, but where irremovable
error has crept in to mar that perfection, we may, likewise,
be prepared to find that that error is to be found, very
often, wherever linkage of these circulatory media takes
place, or at the points of alteration of lumina of channels,
or altered physical consistence and physiological condition
of circulating material ; such, for instance, as may be found,
where the alimentary materials are taken up by the gastro-
intestinal mucosa, where the chyliferous vessels pass through
their associated glands, in the capillary areas of the lungs,
and peripheral capillary blood vasculature, the incipient
lymphatic vasculature, where its lumen is valved, or passes
through glands, as well as at all those points where the
various great excretory agencies converge and eliminate
the residual products of sympathetic nervine activity and
vitality. Besides the foregoing, and very specially in the
systemic nervature at its source in the neuroglia of brain,
cord, and ganglia, at its points of axonal fibre interruption
or junction, and at its peripheral terminations, sensory and
motor, or where linkage of its neural elements is effected
with the skin and muscles, it displays a like liability to
circulatory stasis, and a consequent tendency to patho-
logical change and morbid genesis.
As a line of principle for enabling us to trace the
CIRCULATION $59
incidence and progress of disease, we therefore claim that
we have here, based on histological data, a means by
which we may more scientifically diagnose many ailments
of the most profound order, and be enabled to direct their
treatment on less empirical lines than we now are wont
to do.
Moreover, we think it would not be too much were we
to claim a large portion of the group of new growths, or
tumours, as examples of faulty tissue linkage between the
two great systems of innervation, where, and by which,
the normal formative energies of the great organic or vital
machinery are directed along new and strange lines with
the quite natural, but pathological, result, that the natural
formative processes are followed by new and strange tissue
forms and structures, which are generally known by the
names of the normal textures in which they originate, or
from which the formative impulses are derived, and from
whose formative plasma they obtain their support, material
and dynamic. By an extension of this theory of the
origin of disease, or pathological change, to the class of
tumours known as malignant or cancerous, we have but to
assume that further pathological changes are effected by
the addition of fresh morbid, or intensified pathogenic
formative, impulses and pabulum to the specific work of
the already discordant elements, and that a consequent
continued further departure from the normal character of
the original structures involved takes place, during which
it may be that every trace of the original structures is
destroyed, and an absolutely foreign, but pathologico-
physiological, structural element alone is left to occupy
the tissue spaces of the hapless host and to destroy its life.
We furthermore would add, that that parallelism, or
synchronicity, which should characterise the cessation of
function, and the removal of disused structure, is alone
possible when the circulatory ways are " straight," and
where the vis medicatrix nature can effectually assert itself
in the maintenance of " a clear bill of physiological health,"
by a dynamic superiority of influence over all interloping
pathogenic agencies, be they physical, chemical, or bacterial,
or misdirected formative impulses, and consequent neo-
plastic developments.
560 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Visceral and textural limitations, or boundaries, and
fibro-muscular attachments forming inter-textural frontiers,
or boundary lines, of compoundly innervated elements,
lend themselves to circulatory disturbances and stases, and
so afford " backwater eddies " of debatable plasma and of
questionable character, so to speak, in which the dynamic
and material factors of disease are allowed, it may be, a
momentary and precarious footing, but in which, if the
tone of physiological health, local or general, happens to
be lowered, that footing may be sufficient to allow of a
beginning in the process of pathogenesis and the evolution
of definite disease ; the character of which latter will be
regulated by the factors in operation and the structural
elements involved, — so-called functional disease being from
this point of view an impossibility — the truth of which
statement, were we possessed of sufficiently effective means
-of observation, would necessarily be discovered and made
available for practical materio-dynamic purposes. Disease
is thus the outcome of abnormal dynamic and material
agencies, working primarily along normal, or physiological,
lines, and the expression in new forms of growth of the
results of determinate formative materio-dynamic activity,
■each new form taking on the character of the predominant
physiological factor or factors, and local structural condi-
tions, material and dynamic ; thus, neuroma is the outcome
of a stasis of neural circulation and accumulation or growth,
and indicates quasi-organisation of the axonal fibre medul-
lary material within the peri-neural sheaths, while true
sarcoma is due to a stasis and new formative arrangement
of the elements of muscular tissue within the structural
limits of conformable textures, and so with the other
varieties of new growth.
EXTRACT LIV. b.
ON SOME DEDUCTIONS FROM THE FOREGOING
STUDIES IN THEIR BROAD AND GENERAL BEAR-
INGS : NUTRITION, INNERVATION, ETC.
It is a truism to say that in the human body we have to
deal with only two entities, viz. energy and matter, but
energy and matter in transcendental relationships to each
other, the result being the development, production, or
evolution of an organic entity sui generis, and altogether
unique in the known realms of nature.
Energy and matter, whether they be found ultimately
resolvable and interchangeable entities or not, exist
sufficiently apart from each other here as to necessitate
their individual recognition as co-partners in the produc-
tion of the human being, and, for that part of it, of every
organic unit throughout the universe, hence, we think,
that it may not be altogether unprofitable if we study
them individually, and as related genetic elements and
co-efficients in the production and evolution of human
life, and as the determining agents in the maintenance of
that life, as well as in the initiation of the diseases to which
the human body is liable, and which usually terminate its
duration.
As to matter, it may be said that, even before so-called
scientific times, it has been recognised as the basis of
organism, as well as the substance of the soil and the
matrix of the " everlasting hills." Since the advent of
science, however, it has had a specific meaning, or signi-
fication, assigned to it, which has raised it to the position
of one of the partners in all the material or tangible
2 N
562 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
developments of the universe, those of organic nature
included.
Thus regarded, the entity matter seems the more
passive partner in the working of organic activity, lending
itself merely to active change of form and arrangement,
under the resolvent influence, of energy, and comporting
itself so as to allow the combined business, so to speak, of
the partnership to be conducted to the greatest mutual and
individual, as well as general, advantage, for specific ends
and purposes, temporary and more permanent.
Energy, however, was long comparatively ignored by
the world at large, or, if dimly perceived, was so over-
shadowed by its more apparent partner matter, that its
qualities and attributes are now only being gradually
appreciated by the powers of science, and brought home
to the intelligence of that world, by their scientifically
directed and utilitarian application to its everyday neces-
sities. In the human organism energy and matter
are united in all the vital work characterising it, in sub-
servience to the behests of intrinsic and extrinsic neces-
sities, and it is only by that human organism that the
highest physico-psychic attainments have been reached in
the organic world, and that the "confines" of the im-
material, metaphysical, and theologically recognised spiritual
universe have been entered, and to some extent traversed.
The mode of energy called "vital" inter-penetrates the
formative or protoplasmic matter, and organically " in-
spires " and arranges it to suit the developmental require-
ments of the living and growing organism of man, beginning
its proper operations in the primordial particles, set apart by
appropriate selective provision for the propagation of the
species, and terminating them sooner or later with the
death or devitalisation of the more or less mature, or
perhaps senile, individual organism. This vital energy
must, necessarily, be primarily imparted to, and must
co-incidently determine, the primary molecular arrange-
ment of germ and sperm cell materials respectively, each
of these supplying thereafter its contribution of formative
plasmic elements to the common resultant uni- cellular
organism.
The uni-cellular human organism being thus materially
NUTRITION, INNERVATION, ETC. 563
and dynamically the result of the combination of two
formative bodies, each of the most highly specialised and
potential character, possesses within itself, besides life,
the ability to undergo, with the aid of the maternal
structures, and vitality or energy, changes fitting it for a
multi-cellular existence and, ultimate independent life.
The uni-cellular body lives and has its being in virtue
of its molecular material basis, being energised, or inner-
vated, and organised by its originally contributed or
innate energy, supplemented in time by union with the
material structures, and the pseudo-parasitic acquirements,
from this source, of both energy and matter. In its
earliest, or uni-cellular, condition, it is thus innervated, or
energised, by its own intrinsic force, through the special
molecular arrangement, or organic disposition, of its
substance, in such manner as affords the necessary facilities
for the exercise, or operation, of the inherent and in-
herited intra-cellular formative impulses.
The entry of the sperm into the germ cell determines,
or initiates, the phenomena of intra-cell circulation, inner-
vation, and development, by the introduction into a
hitherto passive body of an active nucleus and formative
impulse, and by the bringing into direct contact, and
within the range of influence of mutual affinity, highly
energised, and vitally active, materials, and marks the
beginning of the evolution of the complex mechanisms
known as alimentary, circulatory, and nervous systems,
which form the machinery of the succeeding stages of
multi-cellular and embryonic development, and fcetal,
independent, and adult lite.
It therefore goes without saying that uni-cellular is co-
extensive and synonymous with intra-cellular life here, and
that all the attributes of organic activity, and the display
of vital phenomena generally, are manifested, in miniature,
within the precincts of such uni-cellular organisms, the
material changes and exchanges being conducted in mole-
cular and atomic proportions, and the dynamic phenomena
displayed being measured on the same scale of magnitude.
Within each such organism, it follows that all the
material or metabolic arrangements, and re-arrangements,
take place along certain definite lines or channels, the
564 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
lumina of which are of atomic proportions only, by the
influence of dynamic impulse and propulsion, determined
by physical, chemical, and vital necessities and laws, as
bindingly and exactly operative as are those displayed in
any other department of organic nature ; in this uni-cellular
organic microcosm, moreover, we see the cell phenomena
of plant and animal life generally " anticipated " on the
minutest of scales, the substance of the cell plasma
circulating within it, from one atomic space to another, by
intra-cellular dynamic agency, very much in the same
manner as tissue plasma is conveyed from cell to cell by
inter-cellular dynamic agency along the inter-cellular canali-
culi, commonly known as cell processes or inter-
communicating fibres — not solid, but, as we think and
contend, hollow tubes or porous textures. Circulation,
therefore, manifests itself from the first instant of uni-
cellular life throughout the whole area of intra-cellular
space and substance, and is determined and sustained by
the dynamic and evolvent influence of the inherent energy
of the organism for developmental purposes and ulterior
organic ends, innervation being thus also "foreshadowed,"
and the complex process of metabolism and nutrition fully
and clearly displayed in their elementary and simplest
forms.
It thus becomes evident that human uni-cellular life
originates, or begins, in virtue of the co-existence in the
fecundated ovum, or combined germ and sperm elements,
of an initiative developmental power, energy, or dynamic
influence, whereby these elements are histologically or
molecularly arranged in such order and sequence as to
permit, and determine, a regular and coherent process of
formative growth and development, capable of leading to
similar, but further physiologically diversified multi-cellular
structures, according to definite plans, and with definite
objects or purposes. The parentally imparted energy,
thus employed, arranges the matter of the ovum, or
fecundated cell, into rudimentary organic units or mole-
cular groups in pseudo-fibral form, each constituent
molecule of which, after having subserved its organic
purpose, becomes used up, and has left a structural void,
being replaced by another, thus initiating or founding the
NUTRITION, INNERVATION, ETC. 565
principle of circulation as one of the active determining
factors in the economy of nutrition or metabolism.
The process of uni-cellular material circulation is effected,
in virtue of the pseudo-fibral, linear, or successional
molecular arrangement, of the intra-cellular substance, and
necessarily, therefore, along "the lines of least resistance,"
secured by such developmental disposition, determined
and operated by its specific or innate energy, and supple-
mented by the necessary surrounding maternal conditions,
material and dynamic. Intra-cellular circulation, therefore,
consists of the processional movement of the intra-cellular
contents along definite lines, secured by definite develop-
mental provisions, in obedience to definite " vital laws "
and requirements by " vital dynamics " ; these latter, or
" vital dynamics," being so specific and sui generis as to
partake of, and transcend, all the dynamics now known
to science. Innervation, in a word, is the dynamic sine
qua non of life, or the active vitality ; without it, the
future or possible live elements of organic matter refuse to
alter their still inorganic character and arrangement, and
continue to yield themselves to the continued domination
of inertia and other ordinary inorganic laws ; but with it,
and favourable conditions for its operation or exercise,
the elements, as by enchantment, assume the conformation
and characteristics of living forms, yielding themselves to
its behests, meeting its every requirement, and partaking
in its conquests of vitality and organic order over dead
matter and inorganic forces.
As the dynamics of the fecundated ovum, in its intra-
cellular life, are due to, and operated by, innervation, so
they continue, in its kariokinetic divisions, to dominate
the individual life of each of these divisions or units, and
by nervine combination of them, to direct their life and
work to the accomplishment of common, developmental,
and functional ends, until the resultant multi-cellular
organism assumes proportions, requiring its division in
turn into organs and systems requiring more or less
specific and individual innervation.
Innervation is, therefore, divisible into intra-cellular,
inter-cellular, and inter-systemic systems, according as
vitality is existent and operative in cell, multi-cell, or
$66 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
systemic organisms and proportions for the time being,
and is capable of meeting the dynamic wants of one,
more, or all of these organic conditions, individually and
collectively, in every conceivable situation.
While circulation characterises the manner of disposal
of matter within the living organism, so does it charac-
terise that of energy, both being amenable to the control
of the same laws, for the accomplishment of the same
purposes or for common ends. Thus the material and
dynamic activities of the cell constitute its raison d'etre,
whether it begins and ends as a uni-cellular organism, or,
by mitotic continuation, becomes the instrument, through
evolution, of founding a multi-cellular organism, while, in
turn, the multi-cellular organism, retaining its connection
with its uni-cellular parent, by cell processes through which
innervation of the common cell colony is maintained,
perpetuates, by continuity, the effective operation of the
same activities, material and dynamic.
Circulation, thus far in the organic scale, is merely intra-
cellular and inter-cellular, and, therefore, is determined
and operated by the inherent nervine energy of cell and
cell group on principles emanating from uni-cell and
multi-cell sources, and, therefore, devoid of any central
nervine control, productive or distributive ; it is, how-
ever, the circulation on which the organic life of man is
dependent, and by which he is able to maintain the
working of that vast machinery amid which his central
nervous system has ultimately to be placed for the
accomplishment of his highest terrestrial destiny.
Circulation and innervation, being alike the possession
of cell and multi-cell organisms, it becomes apparent that
metabolism and nutrition, the processes by which life is
maintained, must be directly related to them in the way
of cause and effect ; if so, we must therefore be prepared
to find that the channels of least resistance, along which the
circulation of the two entities — matter and energy — must
and can only be those channels; it, therefore, further
follows that the material circulated can, and must, only be
the plasma or pabulum from which the nutritional
elements are supplied, and that its vital distribution and
organic disposal is the principal function of innervation —
NUTRITION, INNERVATION, ETC. 567
the modes of nervine energy being exercised in the uni-
cellular organism in molecular proportions, and in the
multi-cellular organism in cellular proportions. In the
former, or uni-cellular organism, nutrition, therefore,
begins with and consists in, the neuro-dynamic conveyance
of the material elements of the structureless cell proto-
plasm to the nascent structural developmental areas, and
its disposition there in the proper molecular and atomic
vacuoles reserved for its reception, through the reticular
pseudo-fibro- vasculature, which gradually appears through-
out the body of the cell. In the multi-cellular organism,
while the uni-cellular, circulatory, and neuro-dynamic
machinery is retained and continued in active employment
in maintaining the vital integrity of its individual cells, an
inter-cellular, material, and dynamic machinery is evolved
and maintained as each mitotic division of the growing
cell community takes place, which ultimately assumes the
proportions and extent of a nervous system, and which, in
the higher animal world, is recognised as the sympathetic
nervous system.
This description of nutrition involves the idea that the
developmental and nutritive pabulum exists in non-detectable
intra-spaces within the apparently homogeneous matrix of the
cell body, which, on the application of the necessary dis-
tributive dynamic agency, takes its place in the appropriate
intra-cellulo-organic spaces, to be renewed by nutrition as it
becomes worn out and displaced ; as well as the further
idea, that within the cells of the multi-cell organism,
individually and collectively, there exists the pabulum
required for the development, growth, and nutrition of
that organism, both in its cellular and non-cellular, or
fibral, textures and nascent organs. Moreover, it seems
justifiable to conclude from these premises that intra-cell
spaces of uni-cell bodies, and the cell cavities of multi-cell
bodies, are but receptacles, or cisterns, of nutritive plasma,
which can be drawn from, as the exigencies of nutrition
require and determine, by the proper nervine detective or
selective agency, and dynamic impulse, along the neuro-
fibral pathways, or inter-cell processes, whose patency or
porosity secures the necessary vasculature for inter-cell
material change and exchange. The ration d'etre of the
568 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
cell is thus made more manifest when we consider that
the nutritive sum of the gross pabulum of to-day with
which we supply our bodies, after manifold physical,
chemical, and physiological change, is stored up, or
deposited, throughout the entire cell intra-spaces of these
bodies to become the supporting medium of their whole
structures and organs to-morrow.
Nutrition thus manifests itself within the human body
as a uni-cellular, multi-cellular, and inter-systemic phenome-
non, accordingly as it is viewed, elementarily or systemically,
embryologically, or within the fully developed body. It
is due to circulation and organisation of plasmic material,
actuated and determined by innervation, or the play of
vital energy, within a suitable body on suitable alimentary
matter — that matter undergoing change, under the influ-
ence of vital energy, from its originally inorganic condition
to its fully organised form, through the phases of alteration
of its atomic arrangement and molecular disposition, its
granular rearrangements, cellular developments, textural
fabrications, visceral organs, and ultimate systemic
combinations.
As a uni-cellular phenomenon, nutrition consists in the
imbibition by the cell wall endosmotically of the required
alimentary plasma, and its metabolic disposal, and, synchron-
ously, in the excretion exosmotically of efFete and non-
nutritious material, by the operation of its innate vital,
selective, and katabolic energies. As a multi-cellular
phenomenon, it consists of the above uni-cellular nutritive
method, conjoined with inter-cell distribution of nutritive
plasma by means of cell-communicating processes, each
cell passing on that plasma to the cell, or cells, with which
it is united, until the entire related cell community has
had its nutritive wants met. Like uni-cell metabolism,
the multi-cell metabolism must comprise and synchronise
with the removal or excretion of effete and useless material
into the extra-cell spaces and lymph areas for removal, to
the end that nutritive circulation should not consist in
the redistribution of such probably, or potentially, toxic
elements. Pursuing the subject, we see that again inter-
systemic or pan-systemic nutrition is effected by both of
the foregoing methods, conjoined with the specially and
NUTRITION, INNERVATION, ETC. 569
finally evolved haemal and systemic nervine circulations and
nutrition, which are the last to appear of the three systems
of circulation and nutrition — the three systems appearing
at three well-marked epochs of developmental progress in
the growth of the human organism, and synchronising,
first, with the coalescence of the sperm and germ elements
of the ovum ; second, the earliest mitosis of the uni-cell
ovum ; and, third, the primary arrangement of these
mitotic multi-cell elementary textures into definite organic
or histological tissues and organs for definite physiological
or systemic purposes. Thus, from the most elementary
to the most complex tissue conditions characterising the
development and evolution of the human body, nutrition
is effected on the definite lines of circulation and innerva-
tion, inspired by life or vital energy, which suffice both to-
initiate and maintain it so long as the necessary material
and dynamic conditions are supplied and the requisite
intra-organismal or physiological health is maintained.
These three methods of nutrition, although appearing
at definite developmental epochs, continue to take part in
the accomplishment of the one general work ; that general
nutritional work being intra-cellular, inter-cellular, and
systemic in its manner and method, and requiring for
its accomplishment the simultaneous operation of the
three. Three planes of formative or vital activity are
herein represented, viz. the molecular or intra-cellular,
the granulo-homogeneous or fibro-inter-cellular, and the
corpuscular or haemo-vascular ; but to these three planes
has to be added the highest plane of all, the nutritive and
circulatory phenomena included in the tout ensemble of the
vital work of the human body, the specifically nervine or
neuro-psychic.
The nutritive plasma, at the stage of embryonic life
when the first three methods of nutrition are combined
for the general purpose of growth and differentiation
of component structures, is conveyed to the embryonic
organism, fully prepared by the maternal organism, and
requiring only to be assimilated by its formative
economy ; at the stage of post-natal development,
however, when the infant organism has to prepare its
ingesta for absorption into its haemal circulation, and
570 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
assimilation by its various textures and organs, the fourth
method of circulation and nutrition comes into fuller
and fuller operation, until, to a great extent, it over-
shadows the first three ; but here, nevertheless, as between
the first three, the principle of union and co-operation
for common ends marks its advent into the combination
and the working of the future organism.
The nutritive plasma is prepared and passed through an
alimentary tube by a highly organised series of circula-
tory structures, preparatory to its absorption into, and
vitalisation by, the haemo-genetic economy, after which
the various methods of nutrition are resorted to and the
wants of the whole organism are met by its passage into
cell, related cells, tissues, and organs by the methods
of circulation and nutrition, just described, under the
dynamic influence of innervation, intra-cellular, sym-
pathetic, and systemic.
The various planes of nutritive activity, actuated by
these various methods of innervation, are represented by
the formative growth and organisation of certain struc-
tural bases ; thus, the uni-cell meets the necessity of
the first plane of nutritive work, the multi-cell community
the second, and the systematised arrangement of cell
communities the third, while the fourth has a huge matrix
of faintly organised material in the form of the entire
neuroglial substance from which to extract the elements
of its growth, development, and nutrition, as well as those
required for the growth, development, and nutrition of
skeletal muscle, and related, or histologically continuous,
textures, periosteal, osteal, and others.
The plasma for the last, or systemic nervine, method of
nutrition, is deposited by the pia mater from its hasmal
vasculature amid the inter-spaces of the dense fibro-
cellular feltage of the neuroglial matrix, where it is
constantly available for purposes of neuronal nutrition
and neuronal protection as well ; each neuronal unit
supplying itself by its own absorptive economy from
the common neuroglial store, and passing its used-up
material on to its terminal distribution for final excretion
and disposal by its afferent, or efferent, end organs, as
the case may be.
NUTRITION, INNERVATION, ETC. 571
Throughout the whole of this nutritive economy, it will
be observed that the cell nutritive method is the founda-
tion of all the nutritive methods and that uni-cellular
nutrition but repeats itself in every alteration of method,
the principle of uni-cell innervation being also repeated,
while the addition of a multi-cell system, and proper
nervine methods of innervation, are also repeated and
maintained as the widening range of organic activities
increase, and the necessity for organic division of labour
forces itself on the formative* and nutritive determinant
materio-dynamic, or central, mechanism of life.
The independent, or uni-cell method of nutrition,
merges into multi-cell methods, which in turn develop
into inter-textural and inter-organic, or vascularly united
nutritive methods — the last mentioned being followed by
the nervine, or neural, proper methods, each flowing
out of the other as the conditions of the life of the
organism alter in complexity, and as differentiation of
its component parts necessitate increase and elaboration of
its dynamic and circulatory, or nutritive, machinery.
It thus follows, that each system, or method, of nutrition
is self-determined and actuated, inasmuch as the most
elementary and simple of the various systems, or methods,
enumerated proceeds, and gives origin to, the more
complex, the prerogatives of each system being retained
and utilised by the others, until they all merge into one
systemic whole, in which the widest individual freedom is
allowed, consistent with the united welfare of the com-
pleted communal organism.
The relationships, therefore, of the reputed cerebrospinal
trophic centres must be assigned a position in the economy
of nutrition of a relatively much more restricted character
than that now in vogue ; inasmuch as the three first
methods of nutrition can be, and are, under many circum-
stances, both physiological and pathological, absolutely alone,
in determining and maintaining the operation of the process
of nutrition of cell, tissue, and organ — the systemic neural
■element in that process, for the time being, completely
disappearing, to be renewed in the former, or physiological,
but often never to be renewed in the latter, or patholo-
gical, condition.
572 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
Thus, it follows that nutrition, of the non-systemically
innervated structural elements of the body, is accom-
plished by non-systemically innervated means, and that
the nutritive role of the systemic nervous system is
restricted to the neuro-dermal and the neuro-muscular
and skeletally continuous or related structures. It may
be claimed, however, that the inter-relationships of non-
systemic and systemic innervations are so intimate that a
definite connexus, or a system of material and dynamic
continuity, pervades the entire areas of innervation and
nutrition, whereby a common system of material and
dynamic circulation is maintained throughout the entire
body, securing its vitality and functional integrity from
uni-cell to completed organism, so long as the conditions
of life of the units subsist.
In all this we see alone the mechanism and working
of life, but do not once detect the great entity known as
life itself: like a watch, which we energise by a few
contractions of our arms and muscles and turns of a key,
and set moving in its determined way, so life is the
dynamic outcome of a supreme influence, or source of
energy acting " behind the scene " of human organism, as
well as every living organism, and using it and them
for purposes and in ways which " we wot not of."
A wide field for pathological research here opens up,
where the physiological methods of nutrition become
merged in the pathological, often by unbroken material
and dynamic links, so seemingly similar that it is impos-
sible, by the knowledge we now possess, to say where
the one ends and the other begins — health and disease
co-existing in the same organism, and contending for the
mastery.
We would further conclude, that health alone can exist
where complete separation is maintained between nutritive
and effete materials within the areas of trophic, or meta-
bolic, change, and we claim that that is effected by a
continuity of onward circulation of the materials composing
the ingesta and egesta during their intra-corporeal progress
and their final restoration to the outer world.
From the conversion of the raw materials of food and
drink into arterial blood, and their conveyance into the
NUTRITION, INNERVATION, ETC. 573
matrix of every tissue of the body, a well-marked circula-
tion, through formed or organised vasculatures, con-
tinuous the one with the other, takes place, and when
they arrive at these tissues their circulation is taken up by
cellular agency, and transmitted from cell to cell by
connecting cell processes, previous to the passage of
anabolised nutriment, the preceding metabolised plasma
having been moved on and katabolised, when it is shed
into the intercellulo-fibral lymph spaces, gathered into the
lymphatic vasculature, and returned into the blood stream
to be further dealt with as still useful or altogether
effete, while a portion of that arterial circulation is
diverted into the pia mater vasculature and deposited in
the meshes of the neuroglial matrix as the material for
the maintenance of the systemic nervous system, another
portion being released to form or become the cerebro-
spinal lymph — all of which in turn continue circulating
until they either are returned directly into the outer
world or join once more the great blood circulation to
be still further dealt with.
EXTRACT LIV.c.
ON SOME THOUGHTS ON THE GENERAL PRACTICAL
BEARINGS OF THE FOREGOING EXTRACTS, AND
ON THE UNITY OF THEORY AND PRACTICE.
One of the fiYst thoughts to strike us, is the need for uniting
the " practical results " of the " findings " of the various
sciences, on which the professions of medicine, surgery,
and obstetrics rest into one coherent body of doctrine,
which shall be at once conducive to true scientific progress,
to the satisfying of human necessities and health wants,
and that will lend itself under all circumstances to
immediate availability. To this end it seems to us that,
as heretofore, the foundation for uniting the " practical
results " and " findings " of science must primarily be
laid, in a full understanding of the plan of inorganic
nature and its bearings on the superimposed weight of
doctrine, included in the nature and sequence of organism
and life chemistry ; therefore, natural philosophy and
natural history must continue to constitute the foundation,
supplying at once the necessary knowledge and begetting
the acquirement of familiarity with the use of the "tools"
and " methods of handicraft " of abstract and applied
science.
On this foundation, it may justly be claimed that all, or
almost all, the notable additions to the science and art of
these professions have been evolved, and on this founda-
tion have been built up the structures of the various
sciences composing medical, surgical, and obstetric
common knowledge ; it behoves, therefore, all who are
engaged in imparting this knowledge to recognise the
THEORY AND PRACTICE 575
important fact that not only the foundation, but a large
portion of the superstructure, belongs in common to its
special latter-day developments. This superstructure of
common knowledge, consisting of anatomy, histology,
physiology, and pathology, raises the edifice of medical,
surgical, and obstetric teaching to a level where it becomes,
safe and reasonable for special developments to begin,
and for special culture to be attempted.
From here, it becomes possible to maintain a common
connection between the special after-developments of
medicine, surgery, and obstetrics, when the retention of
that common connection becomes a matter of the greatest
possible value in its practical bearings as a means of
permitting the combined focussing of scientific opinion
and the formulation of practical designs for the common
advantage, thereby also preventing the divorce of
specialism from the general partner, to which it was and
should ever continue to be attached, and securing the
joint advantages of a united progress and oneness of
purpose for the general good. Furthermore, from this
common level of scientific knowledge, which can be and
is attained by many, if not all, for its own sake, a training
has necessarily been acquired which goes far to enable the
general practitioner and specialist alike to " scale the
heights " and " traverse the unknown regions " that lie
immediately ahead of the pioneers of science, and its
utilitarian companion art, in all directions.
Thus the cohesion and continuity of scientific and
practical progress in the domain of medicine in its widest,
deepest, and most exact sense and bearings, is most likely
to be secured and perpetuated, if it is recognised that
from and to this common basis, or starting-point, all
workers, scientific, practical, and dilettanti, must "shape
their course" and "make their return," bringing back
with them, if haply successful in their efforts, their contri-
butions of discovery or invention to the sum of knowledge,
ameliorative potentiality, and curative power.
A word on a plea for the unification and simplification of
science, more especially biological science. The tendency
displayed throughout the " circle of the sciences," in later
times, to expedite its course, consciously or unconsciously,.
576 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
has been on the part of its votaries to narrow the field of
vision and to specialise the* subject of investigation, until
now the data available for the purposes of a general
advance are in danger of being left unused and ineffective
amid the constantly increasing accumulation of isolated
facts, due to the cultivation of specialism.
Thus the special collections of these data in the hands
of specialists, the archives of societies and institutions, and
the great national museums and libraries of stored
knowledge, now constitute an incalculable mass of more
or less available and digested facts or material which
should be capable in the hands of men in touch with
the latest movements of research and discovery, of yield-
ing great formulative results, and of conducing to the
recognition of the laws by which the universe, in all its
recognised parts, is governed, as well as of showing the
details of its manner of working, so as to be systematised
and made of practical value in the affairs of human life
and work.
■GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBKRT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA MEDICAL SCHOOL LIBRARY
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