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

intercostal nerves, there can be no doubt left whatever. These nerves are too remote from the uterus, in their peripheral ex- tremities, to admit of any other explanation save that of the reflex function. But what I wish to insist upon is this — that all the actions I have been describing are reflex in their nature. Physiology repudiates the idea of uterine contractions excited by means of continuity or contiguity of the organs excited, with the organs which contract. The peripheries of the nerves of the bladder, rectum, vulva, and vagina receive the impression through the inci- dent nerves and the spinal centre, while the motor nerves of the uterus, distributed to its muscular structure, are all concerned in the muscular contraction which ensues. Though the organs excited are near the uterus which contracts, the route of the nervous action is precisely the same as it was in the case when the stimuli were applied to the mammary or the pneumogastric nerve. I make these observations because I still see the obso- lete notion, which so long perplexed physiology, of referring all such actions to the sympathetic nerve, and to the mere anatomi- cal distribution of nerves to neighboring organs from the same source, cited by some authorities as sufficient to account for all such motor phenomena as those which take place between the different pelvic organs respectively. They look only at the nerves interlacing and communicating with each other, and their minds do not reach to the necessity of considering the spinal centre as the organ which connects the roots of motor and excitor nerves, and provides the power, as well as a way- station "ganglion" for prompt nerve-telegraphing. Tlie Uterine Nerves. — The power we possess over the uterus by this means is very great indeed, and the modes by which we can exert it are very various. "We may excite the nerves of the external surface of the uterus, the nerves of the internal sur- face, or the nerves of the os uteri, respectively. When, for example, we produce uterine contractions by irritating the uterus through the abdominal surface, we act on the first series of nerves; when we inject cold water into the uterine cavity, or introduce an electrode, we act on the second ; and when we