| Transcript | The Priory,
21, North Bank,
Regents Park.
Wednesday
My dear Sir
The very remarkable paper you were kind enough to send me has been very instructive, and some day I will ask you to lend me Bouchard's memoir, if you possess it.
I have many doubts respecting WaIler's idea of the nutritive centres of nerve fibres. His facts are indisputable, and his idea for a long while misled me on a wild goose chase after the homologies of the spinal ganglia & posterior horns; but I have seen too many contradictory & destructive facts to hold that explanation now. In the special case you have brought forward I do not think the explanation acceptable because I have very many times separated the fibres from those supposed centres of nutrition (by section and hemisection of the cord, and removal of the brain) yet after several weeks the cord has exhibited no degeneration when hardened in chromic acid. On the other hand I did once observe what I now (enlightened by you) comprehend to have been a secondary degeneration in the cord of a mole whom I stunned by a blow on the back part of the head.
Query; Is not the cause of the degeneration primarily an exhaustion of Neurility owing to the excess of stimulus (shock) destroying the molecular structure of the nerve, & secondarily a consequent influence on the capillaries?
Yours very faithfully
G.H. Lewes
H.C. Bastian Esq. M.D. |