Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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tormcal fibre. These communications can only take place through the medium of nerves, and whether there be one channel or many, whether the chief place be given to the spinal fibrillar of the sympathetic, or to the proper nerves of the spinal cord, the necessity for uterine nerves is equally inexorable. There must be nerves, and there must be nerves sufficient for the functions to be performed. Anatomical facts can never give the lie to the facts of physiology." There are three modes of exciting contraction of the uterus. Reflex contractions may be excited, says Dr. W. T. Smith, — 1. By stimuli applied to the mammary nerves. 2. By stimuli through the medium of the pneumogastric nerves, as when food, hot or cold drinks, ergot or emetics, are taken. 3. By stimuli directed to the spine, and the abdominal or inter- costal nerves. The latter, he thinks, is the first and best. The cutaneous nerves of the abdominal parietes are excitors of the uterus in an extraordinary degree. The sudden impres- sion of cold or heat, or both in quick alternate sxiccessions, upon the abdominal surface, will almost always excite the most ener- getic contraction of the uterus, when affected with inertia, and from which, perhaps, hemorrhage is taking place. We may con- tract the relaxed and diffuse uterus to a firm ball, by douching the abdomen with cold water from a height, or by splashing a towel, taken out of cold water, upon the naked abdomen, or by suddenly placing the hand, just taken out of iced water, upon the umbilicus. If the surface of the abdomen should be cold, the sudden impression of heat produces similar contraction. In all these instances it is the reflex actions from the extremities of the cutaneous nerves of the abdomen which are affected by the stimuli. The result takes places too instantly to permit the belief that any sensation of cold or heat passes through the ab- dominal parietes to the uterus itself. The extremities of the cutaneous nerves of the abdomen are, in fact, almost as distant from the uterus as the superior intercostal nerves which sxipply the mammary glands. As to the true mode of action from irri- tation of the mammary and pneumogastric, and the abdominal