Injuries of nerves and their consequences - Reflex Sympathetic ...

NEURO-PHYSIOLOGY. v 37
concerned in their several functions, and that to destroy
a sensitive nerve is to affect injuriously the skin and its
appendages, while section of a motor nerve is
equally certain
to bring about atrophy in the muscle.
Thus, when the lingual sensory nerve was cut, the
mncous surface of the tongue and the papillfe became
wasted, without muscular changes, while these alone followed
division of the hypoglossal nerve. Since, say these
observers, the hypoglossal possesses also a few sympathetic
and sensory filaments, it is still possible that some of these
may be concerned in the result, so that direct experiments
on this nerve do not decisively settle the question. It has
been found possible, however, by lesions of the floor of
at its
the fourth ventricle, to paralyze the hypoglossal
origin without involving any other nerves. Yet, under
these circumstances, the atrophy follows as is usual after
peripheral sections, and leaves us with the fair presumption
that the nutritive life of the muscles depends chiefly upon
their motor nerves.
There is at present in the Pennsylvania Hospital a rare
case which corroborates these views. A small pistol-ball
traversed the neck, and, without causing any graver lesion,
cut the left hypoglossal nerve. This accident resulted in
motor palsy of one-half of the organ, with atropliy of the
muscles, but left undisturbed the senses of touch and
taste, as well as the nutrition of the mucous surface.
The mechanism by which neural irritations or palsies
give rise to inflammations, eruptions, and the like, is
made more clear by the attendant facts in regard to the
secretions of the skin. These, as I shall show, are sometimes
lessened or annihilated, sometimes increased, and
more often altered so as to become excessively acid and
ofi'ensive. It is quite conceivable that the products of
disintegration in the deeper tissues are similarly affected,
so as to be sometimes either excessive or deficient, and