Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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mentality of a nerve whatever. This raised the question, " Are the motor nerves absolutely necessary to bring about muscular contractions and motions ? " We must be reminded that Haller was the first to make the nice distinction between the functions of motion and the functions of sensation, while Sir Charles Bell, in later years, was the first to make the anatomical demonstra- tion of a difference in the organs for producing motion and sensation ; i. c, to show that there are sentient nerves and motor nerves. According to Haller, irritability and sensibility are properties totally unlike and independent of each other. He claimed, in short, that the nerves do not possess the slightest degree of irritability, since they are never put in motion them- selves, whatever be the stimulus that is applied to them. He termed irritable the muscular fibre, and whatever of the human organism that contracts ; i. e., that shortens from being touched by any foreign body. On the contrary, lie termed sensitive the nervous fibril, and whatever of the human organism that on being toucbed by a foreign body, transmits to the mind the im- pression of contact, whether pleasurable or painful; and that sensibility is a property which ceases with life. That irritability, on the contrary, is to be observed for a certain time after life has become extinct. That if motion be brought about through the instrumentality of the nerves, it is only by their conducting the orders of the will, viz., volition to the muscles. This creed of Haller, upon which the medical world has ever since been divided, was first opposed by Dr. Muzer, a distin- guished German physician.* He first proved that there are nerves in all muscular organs, and maintained that the nerves are the only excitors of muscular motion. After the galvanic discovery, this of all questions was taken up afresh by both parties. (These items are introduced hero because they have a direct bearing upon the subject; besides, we must be reminded that this question of Hallerian irritability is the " shading and light" of almost all the works given by the very distinguished names we are to consult.) One party, at the head of which was * Erste Grunde einer Physiologie. Leipzig, 1771.