The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-04-30
Stronger When Dead Than Alive.

1t is well known, says DIR. Brown
Sequard, that If a nerve has been di-
vided, after four days it loses it's power.
The muscles, however, remain perfectly
active, and we can produce contraction
in them. Unfortunately, here, also,
there is an element of nerve tissue,
which is inside of the nerve sheath, and
it is not known whether it has lost its
power or not. In the case of two de-
capitated men, made an experiment of
cutting off the arms. 1 found, after
thirteen and half hours in one case
and fourteen hours in the other case,
that all signs of life in the limbs had
disappeared. Up to that time, either
galvanism or a shock produced by a
blow with my arm or paper-cutter,
caused the muscles to respond to the
irritation. I then injected the blood of
a man into one of those arms, and the
blood of dog into another. In both
cases local life was restored in those
arms. The muscles became irritable
again, and the strength of contraction
was extremely powerful. Indeed, in
the arm in which the blood of the man
had been injected, the power was i'm
mense. 1t was greater certainly than
during life. There was therefore re-
turn of muscular 1rritability after it had
disappeared, and nervous excitability
had not come. The nerves remained
quite dead. Therefore it seemed quite
clear that the muscular irritability de-
pended upon nutrition by blood and
the oxygen in it. The blood injected
was richly charged with oxygen, and
that was the reason why the muscular
irritation became so great. There was
more oxygen than usual. AS the nerves
had not regained any power at all, it
was not through any influence of the
nerves on the muscles that the part had
re-acquired life. There also we find,
however, that same objection, that we
do not know whether the elements of
the nervous tissue which are inside of
the sheath of muscles had lost their
power or not. .g .... g..
But there are other facts more deci-
sive. Professor Simpson, of Edin-
burgh, examined the power of contrac-
ton in the umbilical cord-the cord
which unites the fptus to its mother.
In that cord the contraction by galvan-
ism was made with great intensity
Some psychologists have thought that
there are no nervous centers there. If
there are any, they are very small. In
the iris of an eye 1 have found q sin
gular fact. Long ago 1 had discovered
that light can affect the iris of the eye,
even when it has been removed from
the body for sixteen days and kept at a
temperature of about SO to 40 degrees
Fab. But 1 found that although the
eye was in almost complete putrefac-
tion, the light still acted as al irritant
of muscular fibers. There it was i'm
possible to admit that there was ner-
vous action. The muscular fbers them
selves were considerably altered, still
they acted.
But there is fact which is more de-
cisive to show that muscular irritabllity
is independent of the nervous system
for it's existence. 1t is that if we strike
a muscle that is dying away, we pro-
| duce a ridge at the place we strike. All
the fibers in the muscle contract al that
| place. And as it is impossible to admit
that in those cases there has been a
nervous action in every elementary
fiber, because the parts L spoke of,
which are inside of the sheath, are gen.
orally in the middle of the length of the
fiber, and any part of the muscle may
react in that way, it is, therefore, i'm.
possible to admit that there is any
nervous action in those cases. There.
fore, they show that muscles are indie
| pendent of nerves for their action.