Brain; A Journal of Neurology Volume 11 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ... INHIBITION. BY CHARLES MEECIER, M.B. Of all the Functions of the Nervous System none is so mysterious in its nature or so obscure in its working as that of inhibition. The difficulty of comprehending the method of its action appears to me to have been greatly enhanced by the circumstance, that the most striking and palpable instance of the process, and the one that first arrested attention, is the case of the inhibition of the action of the heart, which is probably an unusual and exceptional form of inhibition. Thus it has happened that the classical example of the process is one that cannot readily be compared with others, nor can we readily argue from this to other instances, and so we are deprived of a powerful leverage. In order to gain a clear concept of the true nature of inhibition we must go down to the bed-rock of the fundamental properties and powers of the nervous system, and regard it as an apparatus for the storage and expenditure of force. If we regard each cell as a reservoir in which force is stored, and each fibre as a channel by which force is carried, we start from a position which no one will nowadays impugn, and which affords us a secure foundation on which to build an hypothesis of the nature of inhibition. The first course to be laid down on this foundation is the fact, also undoubted, that the expenditure, or release, or emission, or escape, of force from the nerve cells, never occurs continuously, but always in intermittent, interrupted outbursts. Whether we regard the process in the aggregate or in detail, this fact is apparent. Every part of the body has its periods of activity and its periods of repose. That is to say, to every part of the body force is distributed by the nervous system, at some times in...