Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
627/740

If we here follow the original views of Dr. W. T. Smith, wc see that the plexuses of the ahdomen, like the external plexuses, are simply mechanical adaptations for mixing nervous fihrcs and communications from different sources, and applying them to tho uterine nerves, it becomes a possibility, and I may say a proba- bility, that the uterine nerves are more variously derived than any other nerves of the human body. They may be derived from different points of the great nervous tract between the origin of the pneumogastric nerve in the medulla oblongata, and the origin of the sacral nerves in the Cauda equina. There is, moreover, no actual impediment to the approach of nervous fibres to the uterus from the medulla oblongata through the medium of the vagus, or from the cervical portion of the spinal marrow by the phrenic, or from the thoracic by the splanchnic nerves, and from the dorsal by tho compound lumbar branches of the sympathetic and the sacral nerves, which latter come directly from the spinal cord. Dr. Smith gives the following physiological proofs of the existence of a large supply of nerves to the uterus. He says, — " There is no doubt that the uterus is susceptible of pain ; this is one proof of a nervous connection between the uterus and the brain as the organ of sensation. No one doubts that an emotion of the mind may excite the uterus to powerful contractions. This is another proof of nervous connection between the brain and uterus. No one denies that, during pregnancy, the uterus affects sympathetically the most distant organs, producing the changes in the mammas, and the gastric disturbances, which are so universal. These facts are explicable by the existence of nervous communications between the uterus on the one hand, and the stomach and mammae on the other. There is no other route than that afforded by the nervous system. No one denies, either, that after parturition, the breast or the stomach may excite the uterus to action; these facts further prove a reciprocal influence from the stomach and breasts to the uterus. Such facts are, in their sphere, as convincing as though the eye could see a great concourse of nerves running between these organs. A physiological fact is worth quite as much as an ana-