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

50 INJURIES OF NERVES.
soliitlous.
Kiihrie has described like effects from the use
of glycerine but the two
;
reagents differ in this respect,
that salt in strong solution acts convulsively on both
nerve and muscle, but glycerine on nerves alone, except
it be diluted with water, when it influences both nerve
and muscle alike. Solutions of certain acids appear also
to possess this property, while others, or stronger preparations
of the same, destroy the power of the nerve to act
further.
The most interesting of the substances thus capable of
exciting the nerves are undoubtedly the biliary acids, for
it is to these, as Budge and Kiihne have proved, that we
must assign the capability of the bile itself to evoke
neuro-muscular spasms, a quality upon which some very
extraordinary hypotheses have been founded.
In all probability many of these agents act by subtracting
from the nerve its water, and thus, finally, abolishing
for a time one of the conditions of its active physiological
life ; for, as has been repeatedly shown, the function of
the nerve may be restored by carefully allowing
it to
reabsorb a supply of this essential element.
These studies have led to certain useful conclusions.
Thus, when we see a nerve preserving
its conductive and
excitative abilities, despite the corrugation and apparent
injury of the medullary portions of its structure, we have
some right to infer that in the unaltered axis cylinder
alone lies the capacity to convey impressions. Vulpian
has also shown that sensitive and motor nerves are alike
acted upon by these reagents a proof added to the rapid
;
accumulation of facts leading to a belief in the unity of
construction and of mode of activity of the various orders
of neural conductors.
The manner in which nerve trunks and their extremities
in the periphery are acted upon by the excess of water,
or its abstraction, is one of larger interest to the neuro-