This system is not as abundantly spread out in the economy as the preceding. The whole mass which it forms, compared with the whole of the other, which is more than one third of the body, presents in this respect a very remarkable difference. Its position is also different; it is concentrated, 1st, in the thorax, where the heart and œsophagus belong to it; 2d, in the abdomen where the stomach and intestines are in part formed by it; 3d, in the pelvis where it contributes to form the bladder and even the womb, though this belongs to generation, which is a function distinct from organic life. This system then occupies the middle of the trunk, is foreign to the extremities, and is found far from the action of external bodies, whilst the other superficially situated, forming almost alone the extremities, seems, as we have said, almost as much destined in the trunk to protect the other organs, as to execute the different motions of the animal. The head contains no part of the organic muscular system; this region of the body is wholly devoted to the organs of animal life.
All the muscles of the preceding system take in general a straight direction. These are all on the contrary curved upon themselves; all represent muscular cavities differently turned, sometimes cylindrical as in the intestines, sometimes conical as in the heart, sometimes rounded as in the bladder, and sometimes very irregular as in the stomach. No one is attached to the bones; all are destitute of tendinous fibres. The white fibres arising from the internal surface of the heart, and going to be attached to the valves of its ventricles, have by no means the nature of the tendons. Ebullition does not easily reduce them to gelatine; desiccation does not give them the yellowish appearance of these organs; they resist maceration longer than them.
It is in general a great character that distinguishes the muscular organic system from that of animal life, that it does not arise from, nor terminate in fibrous organs. All the fibres of this last are continuous either with tendons, or aponeuroses or fibrous membranes. Almost all those of the first go on the contrary from the cellular texture, and return to it after having run their course. I at first thought that the dense and compact texture which is between the mucous membrane and the fleshy fibres of the intestines, the bladder, the stomach, &c. was an assemblage and net-work of many small tendons corresponding to these fibres, and interwoven in the form of an aponeurosis; the density of this layer deceived me at first view. Ebullition, maceration, and desiccation have since taught me, that this layer, completely foreign to the fibrous system, should be referred, as Haller has said, to the cellular,which is only more dense and compact there than elsewhere. It is this layer, which I have designated, in the cellular system by the name of the sub-mucous texture. Many fibres of the system of which we are treating appear to form an entire curve, which is not crossed by any cellular intersection; some layers of the heart exhibit this arrangement, which is in general very rare; so that there is almost always an origin and termination of the fibres, upon an organ of a nature different from their own.
We can hardly consider in a general manner the forms of the system of which we are treating; each organ belonging to it is moulded upon the form of the viscus to the formation of which it contributes. In fact, the organic muscles do not exist in distinct fasciculi, like those of animal life; all, except the heart, form but a third, a quarter and often even less in the structure of a viscus.
The greatest number has a thin, flat and membranous form. There are layers more or less broad, and hardly ever distinct fasciculi. Placed at the side of each other, the fibres are rarely one above another; hence it happens that occupying a very great extent, these muscles form however a very small volume. The great gluteus alone would be larger than all the fibres of the stomach, the intestines and the bladder, if they were united like it into a thick and square muscle.
The organization of the involuntary muscles is not as uniform as that of the preceding. In these all is exactlysimilar excepting the differences of the proportion of the fleshy fibres to the tendinous, of the length of the first, of the prominence of the fasciculi, of their assemblage into flat, long or short muscles; in whatever place we examine them, their varieties are in their forms and not in their texture. Here on the contrary, there is in this texture marked differences; the heart compared with the stomach, the intestines with the bladder are sufficient to convince us of this. It is by virtue of these different textures, that the contractility and sensibility vary as we shall see in each muscle, that the force of the contraction is not the same, and that life is different in each, whilst it is uniform in all those of animal life. We shall now consider in a general manner the organization of the involuntary muscles.
The organic muscular fibre is in general much finer and more delicate than that of the preceding system; it is not brought into as thick fasciculi. Very red in the heart, it is whitish in the gastric and urinary organs. Besides, this colour varies remarkably. I have observed that sometimes maceration renders it of a deep brown in the intestines.
This fibre never has one single direction, like that of the preceding muscles; it is interlaced always, or found in juxta-position in different directions; sometimes it is at a right angle that the fasciculi are cut, as in the longitudinal and circular fibres of the gastric tubes; sometimes it is with angles more or less obtuse or acute, as in the stomach, the bladder, &c. In the heart, this interlacing is such in the ventricles, that it is a true muscular net-work. From these varieties of direction, results an advantage in the motions of these sorts of muscles, which, being allhollow can by contracting diminish according to many diameters the extent of their cavity.
Every organic muscular fibre is in general short; those which, like the longitudinal of the œsophagus, the rectum, &c. appear to run a long course, are not continuous; they arise and terminate at short distances, and thus arise and terminate successively in the same direction or line; no one is comparable to those of the sartorius, the gracilis, &c. as it respects length.
We know the nature of their fibres no better than that of those of animal life; but they appear nearly the same under the action of the different reagents. Desiccation, putrefaction, maceration, ebullition, exhibit in them the same phenomena. I have observed upon the subject of this last, that once boiled, the fibres of both systems are much less alterable by the acids sufficiently weakened. After being some time in the sulphuric, the muriatic and nitric diluted with water, they soften a little, but keep their original form, and do not change into that pulp to which raw fibres are always reduced in the same experiment. The last of these acids turns them yellow as before ebullition.
I have also made an observation as it respects the horny hardening which is produced the instant ebullition commences; it is this, that it is always the same whatever may have been the antecedent dilatation or contraction of the fibres. The stomach which at death was so dilated as to contain many pints of fluid, is reduced to the same size, all other things being equal, as that which is contracted so as to be no larger than the cœcum. Diseases have a little influence on the horny hardening. The heart of a phthisical patient exhibited to me in the same experiment this phenomenon much less evidently, than that of an apoplectic.
The resistance of the organic muscular fibre is in proportion much greater than that of the fibres of the animalmuscular system. Whatever may be the distension of the hollow muscles by the fluid which fills them during life, ruptures hardly ever take place in them.
The bladder alone sometimes exhibits this phenomenon, which is however very rare in it. In the great retentions of the urine, in which ruptures take place, it is almost always the urethra that is ruptured, and the bladder remains whole. We meet in practice with a hundred fistulas in the perineum, coming from the membranous portion, to one above the pubis. We find in authors many examples of rupture of the diaphragm; we know of but few of the rupture of the stomach, the intestines and the heart.
The cellular texture is in general much more rare in the organic muscles than in the others. The fibres of the heart are in juxta-position, rather than united by this texture. It is a little more evident in the gastric and urinary muscles. It is almost wanting in the womb; thus these muscles are not infiltrated, like the preceding, in dropsies; they never exhibit that fatty state of which we have spoken, and which sometimes loads the fibres. I have not observed in these fibres the yellowish tinge which the others often take, especially in the vertebral depressions.
The blood vessels are very numerous in this system; they are found in it even in greater proportion than in the other; more blood consequently penetrates them. This fact is remarkable, especially in the intestines, in which the mesenteric arteries distribute numerous branches, over an extremely delicate fleshy surface. But I would remark that this appearance is to a certain degree deceptive, as many of these vessels only traverse the fleshy surface to go to the mucous membrane. In the ordinary state they give to the gastric viscera a reddish tinge, which I have rendered at will livid and afterwards brought back to itsprimitive state, by shutting and afterwards opening the stop-cock adapted to the wind pipe, in my experiments upon asphyxia.
The absorbents and exhalants have nothing peculiar in this system.
The nerves come to them from two sources; 1st, from the cerebral system; 2d, from that of the ganglions.
Except in the stomach in which the par vagum is distributed, the nerves of the ganglions predominate everywhere. In the heart, they are the principal; in the intestines, they are the only ones; at the extremity of the rectum and the bladder, their proportion is greater than that of the nerves coming from the spine.
The cerebral nerves intermix with them, in penetrating the organic muscles. The cardiac, solar, hypogastric, plexuses, &c. result from this intermixture which appears to have an influence upon the motions, though we are ignorant of the nature of this influence.
All the nerves of the ganglions which go to the organic muscles, do not appear to be exclusively destined to them. A great number of filaments belong only to the arteries; such is in fact their interlacing, that they form, as we have seen, around these vessels a real nervous membrane, superadded to their own, and exclusively destined to them. I would compare this nervous envelope to the cellular envelope which is also found around the arteries, and which is wholly distinct from the surrounding cellular texture; thus it only has communications with the nerves of the organic muscles, without being distributed to these muscles. Besides as the nerves of the ganglions are always the most numerous and essential in them, and as their tenuity is extreme, the nervous mass destined to each is infinitely inferior to that which is found in the voluntary muscles. The heart and the deltoid muscle compared together, exhibit in this respect a remarkable difference.
Under the relation of properties, this system is in part analogous to the preceding, and in part very different from it.
Extensibility is very evident in the organic muscles. The dilatation of the intestines and the stomach by aliments, by the extrication of gas, by the fluids that are found there, that of the bladder by the urine, by injections that are forced in, &c. are essentially owing to this extensibility.
This property is characterized here by two remarkable attributes; 1st, by the rapidity with which it can be put into action; 2d, by the very great extent of which it is susceptible.
The stomach and intestines pass in an instant from complete vacuity to great extension. Artificially distended, the bladder becomes immediately of a size treble, quadruple even of that which is natural to it. It sometimes however resists, but this does not prove its defect of extensibility; it is because the fluid injected irritates it and makes it contract; the organic contractility in exercise, then prevents the development of extensibility, as it sometimes cannot be brought into action by stimulants in a muscle laid bare, because the animal contractility in exercise in the muscle, forms an obstacle to it. The muscles of animal life are never capable of this rapidity in theirextensibility, whether because they are intersected by numerous aponeuroses which dilate but slowly, or whether because their layers of fibres are very thick, two circumstances that do not exist in the muscles of organic life. Hence a remarkable phenomenon that I have observed in all cases of tympanites. When we open the abdomen of subjects that have died in this state, without wounding the swelled intestines, these immediately burst out, swell more, and occupy twice as large a space as they were contained in in the abdomen; why? Because the parietes of the abdomen being unable to yield in proportion to the quantity of gas that is developed, this has been compressed in the intestines during life, and expands immediately by its elasticity when the cause of compression ceases. In dropsies in which the distension is slow, the abdominal parietes enlarge much more than in tympanites. The size of the abdomen would be double in this, if the extensibility of the parietes was in proportion to that of the intestines.
As to the extent of the extensibility of the organic muscles, we can form an idea of it by comparing the empty stomach which oftentimes is not larger than the cæcum in its ordinary state, with the stomach containing sometimes five, six and even eight pints of fluid; the bladder contracted and concealed behind the pubis, with the bladder full of urine from suppression, rising sometimes even above the umbilicus; the rectum empty, with the rectum filling a part of the pelvis in old people in whom the excrements have accumulated in it; the intestines contracted with the intestines greatly distended.
It is to the extent of extensibility of the organic muscles and to the limits placed to that of the abdominal parietes, that must be referred a constant phenomenon that is observed in the gastric viscera; viz. that in the natural series of their functions, they are never all distended at the same time; the intestines are filled whenthe matters contained in the stomach are evacuated; the bladder is not full of urine in the digestive order, until the other hollow organs are empty, &c. In general, that is an unnatural order in which all the organs are distended at once.
There is for the organic muscles a mode of extensibility wholly different from that of which I have just spoken; it is that of the heart in aneurisms, and the womb in pregnancy. The first, for example, acquires a size double, treble even sometimes in its left side, and yet it increases at the same time in thickness. This size is not owing to distension, but to a preternatural growth. The aneurismatic heart is to the ordinary heart, what this is to the heart of the infant; it is nutrition that makes the difference and not distension; for whenever it is owing to this it diminishes in thickness as it increases in extent; there is no addition of substance. Besides the aneurismatic heart has not often the cause that distends it, for commonly in this case the mitral valves allow a free passage to the blood; whilst when they are ossified the left ventricle often remains in a natural state. Moreover, the slow progress of the formation of aneurism proves that it is a preternatural nutrition that has presided over this increase of the heart. You would in vain then empty this organ of the blood it contains, it would not contract and resume its dimensions, as the inflated intestine does which we puncture to allow the air to escape.
In the womb there are two causes of distension; 1st, the sinuses greatly developed; 2d, an addition of substance, a real momentary increase of the fibres of the organ which remains as thick and even more so than in the natural state. At the time of accouchement, the sinuses immediately flatten by the contraction of the fibres; hence the sudden contraction of the organ. But as on the one hand nutrition alone can remove by decomposition the substances added to the fibres to enlargethem, and as on the other, this function is exerted slowly, after the womb has undergone the sudden contraction owing to the flattening of its sinuses, it returns but gradually and at the end of some time to its ordinary size. Extensibility is not then brought into action in the womb filled by the fœtus, and in the aneurismatic heart; these organs really become at that time the seat of a more active nutrition; they grow preternaturally, as they have grown naturally with the other organs; but these do not then experience an analogous phenomenon, they become monstrous in comparison. The womb decreases, because the motion of decomposition naturally predominates over that of composition after accouchement, whilst it was the reverse before this period. The aneurismatic heart remains always so.
These dilatations of the heart should be carefully distinguished from those really produced by extensibility, as in the right auricle and ventricle for example, which are found full of blood at the moment of death, because the lungs which are weakened, not allowing it to pass through them, compel it to flow back to the place from which it came. There are but few hearts which do not exhibit in very various degrees, these dilatations, which we have the power in a living animal of increasing or diminishing at will, according to the kind of death we produce. Two hearts are hardly ever of the same size after death; many varieties are met with, and these depend more or less on the difficulties which the blood experiences in the last moments, in passing through the lungs. Hence why in the diseases of the heart, there is no standard by which we can compare the morbid size, especially if we examine the organ as a whole. In fact the distension of the right side can give it an aneurismatic appearance, and a size even greater than that of some aneurisms. If we examine the left side separately, the error is more easily proved, because this side is subjectto less variations. But the principal difference consists in the thickness. The power of contraction appears to increase in proportion to this thickness, which arises from the substance added by nutrition. It is this power which produces the great beating that is felt under the ribs, the strength of the pulse, &c.
It is in proportion to extensibility. It is often brought into action in the ordinary state. It is in virtue of this property, that the stomach, the bladder, the intestines, &c. contract, and acquire a size so small compared to what they have when they are full. In general, there is no muscle of animal life, which is capable of such extreme contractions as those of organic life.
It should be remarked, however, that life, without having contractility immediately dependant upon it, since the intestines, the stomach, and the bladder contract after death when their distension is removed, modifies it in a very evident manner. The causes even which alter or diminish the vital forces have an influence upon it; hence the following observation that all those accustomed to open dead bodies can make. When the subject has died suddenly, and the stomach is empty, it is much contracted; when, on the contrary, death has been preceded by a long disease which has weakened its forces, the stomach, though empty, remains flaccid, and is found but very little contracted.
We should consider the substances contained in the hollow muscles of organic life, as true antagonists of these muscles; for they have not muscles that act in a direction opposite to theirs. As long as these antagonists distend them, they do not obey their contractility of texture; when they are empty, this is brought into action. It is not, however, upon this property that the mechanism of the expulsion of matters from these organs turns, asaliments from the stomach and intestines, urine from the bladder, blood from the heart, &c. It is the organic contractility that presides over this mechanism. It is difficult to distinguish these properties in exercise. One occasions a slow and gradual contraction, which is without the alternation of relaxation; the other, quick and sudden, consisting in a series of relaxations and contractions, produces the peristaltic motion, those of systole, diastole, &c. It is after the organic contractility has procured the evacuation of the hollow muscles, that the contractility of texture closes them. In death from hemorrhage from a great artery, the left and even the right side of the heart send out all the blood they contain; afterwards empty, they contract powerfully, and the organ is very small. On the contrary, it is very large when much blood remaining in its cavities, distends it, as in asphyxia. These are the two extremes. There are, as I have said, many intermediate states.
The contractility of texture is, in the system of which we are treating, in proportion to the number of fleshy fibres. Thus, all things being equal, the rectum, when empty, contracts upon itself with much more force than the other large intestines; the contraction of the ventricles is much greater than that of the auricles, and that of the œsophagus is much greater than that of the duodenum, &c. &c.
They are almost in an inverse order of those of the preceding system.
The animal sensibility is slight in the organic muscles. We know the observation related by Harvey upon a caries of the sternum that laid bare the heart; they irritated, without its being felt by the patient, this organ, which only contracted under the stimulant. Remove the peritoneum behind the bladder of a living dog, and irritate the subjacent muscular layer, the animal gives but few marks of pain. It is difficult to make these experiments upon the intestines and the stomach; their muscular coat is so delicate that we cannot act upon it without at the same time stimulating the subjacent nerves.
It appears that the organic muscles are much less susceptible of the feeling of lassitude, of which the preceding become the seat after great exercise. I do not know however if in those to which many cerebral nerves go, it does not take place; for example, when the stomach has been for a long time contracted, it is probable that the lassitude of its fibres, produces in part the painful sensation that we then have, and which we call hunger, a sensation that should be distinguished from the general affection that succeeds it, and which becomes truly a disease, when abstinence has been too much prolonged. We know that substances not nutritive then appease this sensation without remedying the disease, when the stomach is filled with them. I refer to the same kind of sensibility the anxiety and distress which patients experience, in whom we keep the bladder in permanent contraction by an open sound in the urethra, which transmits the urine as fast as it falls from the ureters. This sensation does not resemble that of hunger, because the sensibility of the bladder and that of the stomach being different, their modifications cannot be the same. Thus each of these two sensations is different from that of which the muscles of animal life, for a long time contracted, become the seat. I do not believe that the sensation of hunger belongs solely to the cause I have pointed out, and which others have not spoken of; but it cannot be denied that it has much part in it. Who knows if, after a fever in which the action of the heart has been for a long timeaccelerated, the weakness of the pulse which accompanies convalescence, is not a sign of the lassitude in which its fleshy fibres are, on account of the antecedent motion? We know the painful sensation of fatigue which the stomach experiences after the contractions of vomiting.
The animal contractility is foreign to the muscles of organic life. To be convinced of this, we must recollect that on the one hand this contractility always supposes the influence of the brain and the nerves, to bring in play the action of the muscle, and that on the other, the brain, in order to exert this influence, must be excited by the will, by stimulants or by sympathies. Now none of these causes acting upon the brain, the organic muscles cannot contract.
Every body knows that these muscles are essentially involuntary. If some men have had the faculty of arresting the motions of the heart, it is not upon this organ that the brain has acted; the action of the diaphragm and the intercostals has first been suspended; respiration has ceased for a time; then consequently the circulation.
If we irritate the brain with a scalpel or any other stimulant, the muscles of animal life become convulsed; they are paralyzed if we compress this organ. Those of organic life, on the contrary preserve in both cases their natural degree of motion. The heart still continues to beat, the intestines and stomach move some time after the cerebral mass and spinal marrow have been taken away. Who does not know that the circulation goes on very well in acephalous fœtuses; that after the blow that has knocked down an animal, and rendered his whole voluntary muscular system immoveable, the heart is still for a long time agitated, the bladder rejects the urine, the rectum expels the excrements, &c. the stomach even sometimes vomits up aliments? Opium, which benumbs thewhole animal life, because it acts especially upon the brain which is the centre of it, which paralyzes all the voluntary muscles, leaves the others unaffected in their contractions. Intoxication produced by wine exhibits the same phenomenon. A man staggers after drinking; his limbs refuse to carry him, and yet his heart beats with force; his stomach often heaves and rejects the surplus fluids it contains. All narcotic substances also produce this effect.
If from experiments we pass to observations on the sick, we see that all cerebral affections are foreign to the organic muscular system. Wounds of the head with depression, fungi of the brain, effusions of blood, pus and serum, apoplexy, &c. affect exclusively the voluntary muscles, the action of which they increase, weaken or destroy. In the midst of this general derangement of animal life, the organic remains unaffected. The paroxysm of mania and malignant fever likewise proves this fact. Who does not know that in this last the pulse is oftentimes scarcely altered, that sometimes even it is slower?
Frequently in diseases of the head, there are spasmodic vomitings; the action of the heart is accelerated in cerebral inflammations, &c. But these are sympathetic phenomena which happen in the organic muscles, as they do in all the other systems; they may not appear nor be developed; a thousand irregularities are observed in their progress. Whereas the contraction of the muscles of animal life by affections of the brain is a constant, invariable phenomenon, which nothing disturbs, and the development of which nothing prevents, because the means of communication are always the same between the affected organ and the one that moves.
If in the examination of the phenomena relative to the cerebral influence upon the organic muscles, we follow an inverse order, that is to say, that in the affections of these muscles we examine the state of the brain, we observe the same independence; consider most vomitings, theirregular motions of the intestines which take place in diarrhœas, those especially which form the iliac passion, &c.; observe the heart in the agitations of fevers, in the irregular palpitations of which it becomes frequently the seat, &c.; in these derangements of the organic muscles, you will very seldom find signs of lesions of the cerebral organ; it is calm, while every thing is disordered in organic life. Cullen thought that in syncope the action of the brain ceased first, and that that of the heart was afterwards consequently suspended. It is precisely the reverse in the greatest number of cases. The heart, at first affected, ceases to act; now its action being essential to that of the brain, whether from the motion it communicates to it, or from the red blood it sends, the functions of this last are suddenly suspended and the whole animal life ceases. This is remarkable especially in the syncopes that arise from the passions, in those from hemorrhages, polypi, great evacuations, &c. I refer upon this subject to my Treatise upon Life and Death.
If from the influence of the brain we pass to that of the nerves, we find new proofs of the absence of animal contractility in the organic muscles. The most of these muscles receive, as we have seen, two species of nerves, the one cerebral, the other from the ganglions.
The heart, the stomach, the rectum and the bladder are evidently entered by the first species of nerves; now by cutting, or irritating in any way the cardiac filaments of the par vagum, the heart experiences no alteration from it; its motion is neither retarded, nor accelerated. The division of both branches of the par vagum is fatal, it is true, but not until after some days; and I doubt whether it is by the heart that death commences in this case. The principal phenomena consequent upon this division show a great embarrassment in the lungs, a great difficulty of breathing; the circulation appears to be troubled only in consequence.
The same nerves going to the stomach, the same experiment serves to prove the cerebral influence upon this viscus. Now the division of that of one side is usually nothing upon it; that of both soon produces a remarkable derangement in it. But this derangement is wholly different from that which follows the section of the nerve of a muscle of animal life, which becomes suddenly immoveable, whilst that on the contrary the stomach not communicating with the brain except by the par vagum, seems to acquire in an instant an increase of power; it contracts and hence the spasmodic vomitings that are almost always observed during the two or three days that the animal survives the experiment, vomitings that I have constantly noticed in dogs, and which Haller and Cruikshank had before observed. It appears then from this, that though the brain has a real influence upon the stomach, this influence is of a nature wholly different from that which it exerts upon the voluntary muscles. I would observe however that the irritation of one branch of the par vagum, or of both, makes the stomach immediately contract, as happens in a voluntary muscle when we irritate its nerve. It is necessary, in order to make this experiment, to open the abdomen of a living animal, and afterwards to irritate the eighth pair in the region of the neck, so as to have in sight the organ that we make contract.
The bladder and the rectum appear to approximate the voluntary muscles, in their relation with the brain, more than the stomach and the heart. We know that falls on the sacrum, from which arises a shock of the inferior part of the spinal marrow, produce retention of urine; that they strike, as it were, this organ with the same paralysis as the inferior extremities, which then also cease to move. Yet as the bladder is very powerfully assisted in its functions by the abdominal muscles, by the levator ani and other voluntary muscles which surround it, the immobilityof these muscles contributes much to the inability to evacuate the urine. That which makes me think so, is that, 1st, the irritation of the spinal marrow towards its inferior part which puts in motion all the voluntary muscles of the inferior extremities and of the pelvis, does not produce any effect upon this part. I have convinced myself of this fact many times upon dogs and guinea-pigs. 2d. By irritating the nerves coming from the sacral foramina and going to the bladder, nerves that it is often very difficult to find, on account of the blood in an animal recently killed, I have seen this muscle remain immoveable. On the contrary all these nerves having been cut, the injection of a fluid slightly stimulant makes it contract with force. 3d. In experiments upon living animals, as in surgical operations, the violence of the pain which sometimes produces spasmodic contractions of all the muscles of animal life, frequently occasions an involuntary discharge of urine. Now in these cases it is not the bladder that is convulsed; for if in an experiment this phenomenon takes place, open the abdominal parietes, in an instant the flow of urine ceases, because on the one hand the muscles of these parietes cannot act upon the intestines and press them against the bladder, and because on the other the levator ani which contracts and raises this organ, has no resisting point against which it can compress it above. Observe in fact that in strong jets of urine, the bladder is placed between two opposite efforts, one superior, which is the gastric viscera pressed by the diaphragm and the abdominal muscles, the other inferior, which is especially the levator ani which acts by contracting from below above, whilst the opposite effort acts from above below; now these two efforts are evidently under the cerebral influence. I have very frequently had occasion to observe the bladder full of urine in a living animal whose abdomen was opened; I have never seen it contract with sufficient violence to expel the fluid.
I do not deny but that the bladder, by the nerves it receives from the sacral plexuses, is to a certain extent a voluntary muscle; but I say that it is principally by forces accessory to its own and necessary to its functions, that it is subjected to the will; that the animal contractility is much greater in its functions than the sensible organic contractility. How then is the urine retained in this organ, or expelled from its cavity at will? In this way; when the urine falls into the bladder, and is there on the one hand but a short time, and on the other only in small quantity, it is not then an irritant sufficiently powerful to produce the exercise of the sensible organic contractility. The effort which the bladder makes is so small, that it cannot overcome the resistance of the urethra, which being shut by the contractility of texture, must be dilated by the impulse communicated to the urine. In order to void this fluid, there must then be added to the contraction of the bladder that of the surrounding voluntary muscles; now the least effort of these muscles is sufficient to overcome the resistance of the urethra. But if the urine is in great quantity in the bladder, and it has acquired by remaining in it a long time that deep colour which indicates the concentration of its principles, then the irritation that it produces on the organ brings powerfully into action the sensible organic contractility; the bladder contracts, and in spite of the animal, there is an evacuation of urine.
In the rectum, in which the excrements have not a long canal, but only a simple opening to pass, this is furnished with a sphincter which is wanting in the urethra. This sphincter habitually closed must be dilated by the impulse communicated to the excrements. When they are in the rectum a short time and in small quantity, the sensible organic contractility is not brought into action with sufficient power to expel them; it requires the action of the neighbouring voluntary muscles. If thisaction is not determined by the influx from the brain, the excrements remain in the intestines; hence how, for some time, we retain them at will. But as they increase in quantity, and become more acrid by remaining and consequently more irritating, then the sensible organic contractility strongly brought into action, empties the intestine involuntarily. If the sphincter, which is voluntary, is paralyzed, there will be incontinence, because no resistance is opposed to the tendency of the rectum to contract, a tendency which though feeble as long as it is but partly filled, is however always real.
From what we have said, it appears evidently that the bladder and rectum, though receiving cerebral nerves, are yet less influenced by the brain than it at first view appears, and that there is evidently between them and the voluntary muscles a very great difference. They are not mixt, as it is called; they approach the organic muscles infinitely nearer than the others; I doubt even whether if no accessory power acted with and compressed them, the mind could by the nerves which come from the sacral plexuses, make them contract at will. I have never seen an animal void his excrements when the abdomen was open.
Let us conclude from all that has been thus far said, that the cerebral nerves which go to the organic muscles have upon them an influence which by no means resembles that of the cerebral nerves going to the muscles of animal life. I am ignorant moreover of the nature of this influence.
All the organic muscles receive nerves from the ganglions, both the preceding ones which are also penetrated by the cerebral nerves, and the small intestines, and the cœcum, colour, &c. which are exclusively pervaded by them. Now by cutting, tying or irritating in any manner these nerves, by stimulating the ganglions from which they go, by destroying or burning them with a concentrated acid or alkali, the muscle remains in its natural state; its contractions are neither accelerated nor retarded.
I have not been contented with ordinary agents in convincing myself of the deficiency of real action of the nerves upon the organic muscles; a fact, which all good physiologists have always admitted, notwithstanding the opinions hazarded by some physicians who apply the vague term of nervous influence to organs which are not susceptible of it.
I have then employed galvanism, and I am convinced that it has very little, almost no power, in putting into action muscular contractions in organic life, whilst it is the most powerful agent in animal life. I shall not here relate my experiments upon this subject; they will be read in my Researches upon Death.
We can conclude from all that precedes, that the cerebral and nervous influence upon the organic muscles is not known to us; that it does not act as upon the voluntary muscles. It is however real to a certain extent, since it is necessary that the nerves which enter into the composition of these muscles should be of some use; but we are ignorant of this use.
The organic sensibility is strongly characterized in the muscles of which we are treating. Before the sensible organic contractility is developed in them, it is necessary that this should be put in action. But as these two properties are not separated, as in their exercise they always succeed each other, what we are going to say of sensible organic contractility will apply also to the sensibility of the same nature.
Insensible organic contractility or tone, exists in the muscular system, to a degree necessary for its nutrition; but it does not exhibit in it any thing peculiar.
It is the sensible organic contractility that is the predominant property in this system, all the functions of which rest almost entirely upon this contractility, as all the functions of the preceding muscular system are derived as it were from the animal contractility. We shall now examine more in detail this essential property, with regard to which physiology owes so much to the illustrious Haller. We can consider it in three relations; 1st, in the stimuli; 2d, in the organs; 3d, in the action of the first upon the second.
Stimuli are natural or artificial. The action of the first is continual during life; upon them turn in part the organic phenomena; they place in action the muscles, which without them would be immoveable; they are as it were to these organs what pendulums are to our machines; they give the impulse. The second can hardly have effect until after death, or in our experiments.
These stimuli are blood for the heart, urine for the bladder, aliments and excrements for the gastric organs. Every organic muscle has a body, which, habitually in contact with it, supports its motions, as every animal muscle habitually in relation with the brain, borrows from it its power of motion. The natural stimuli support the organs at the same degree of mobility while they remain the same. All things being equal on the part of the organs, the pulse does not vary, the digestive periods continue for the same length of time, the intervals between the excretion of urine are equal, whilst the blood, the chyle or the urine exhibit no differences. But as thesesubstances experience an infinite number of varieties, the organs preserving the same degree of sensibility, have yet frequent changes in their motion.
At the instant chyle enters the blood during digestion, the pulse changes, because the heart is differently irritated. We observe the same phenomenon under different circumstances; 1st, in re-absorptions in which pus goes into the mass of blood; 2d, in the injection of different fluids in the veins, injections that were so frequently made in the last age, at the period of experiments upon transfusion, and which I have also had occasion to make with other views which I shall mention; 3d, in inflammatory diseases in which the blood takes a peculiar character that is yet but little known, and which occasions the formation of the pleuritic buff; 4th, in various other affections, in which the nature of this fluid is remarkably altered; 5th, in the passage of the red blood into the system with black blood. I have observed that in putting a curved tube into the carotid of one side and the jugular of the opposite of a large dog, so that one forces blood into the other, the passage of the red blood into the veins is not fatal like that of the black blood into the arteries; but there is almost always at first an acceleration of the motions of the heart.
The influence of the degeneracy of the fluids in diseases has no doubt been exaggerated; too frequent a source of morbid derangements has been placed in this portion of the economy. But it cannot be denied, that according to the different alterations that the fluids exhibit, they may be capable of exciting differently the solids that contain them. We know that in the same individual, and with the same mass of aliments, digestion varies from one day to another in the duration of its periods; that some aliments prolong and others accelerate it; that some remain very long in the stomach, as it is said, and others as it were only pass through it. Now in all these casesthe organ remains the same, the fluid only varies. According as the kidney secretes urine more or less acrid and consequently more or less irritating, the bladder retains it for a longer or shorter time. Such is oftentimes its stimulating qualities, that the moment it comes into this organ it is involuntarily rejected. Shall I speak of emetics and evacuants by the intestinal canal, the effects of which are so variable? We know that the words drastic, purgative, laxative, &c. indicate the different degrees of the stimulating qualities which certain substances introduced into the alimentary canal exhibit, degrees which are to be considered abstractedly from those of the sensibility of the organs; this in fact can be such, that a laxative may produce greater effects than a drastic purge.
Not only the quality, but also the quantity of the fluids contained in the organic muscles, has an influence upon their contractility. 1st. The word plethora is certainly employed too loosely in medicine; but we cannot doubt that the state which it expresses sometimes exists; now the more blood there is in the heart, the more are its contractions accelerated. 2d. I have many times made transfusion in dogs, whether with a view to that alone, or in researches relative to respiration and circulation. Now I have always observed, that by not opening a vein, to empty the blood as fast as the external jugular receives it (for I always choose this vein for the experiment) by thus producing consequently an artificial plethora, I have, I say, always observed that the motion of the heart was accelerated. I have even seen the eye of a dog become bright and as it were inflamed; in others this phenomenon has not been observed. 3d. We know that in running, in which all the muscles by contracting press out from all sides the venous blood contained in their texture, this which enters the heart in abundance, makes it palpitate powerfully. 4th. There is not doubt but that the quantity of urine and excrements as much andmore than their quality, is for the bladder and the rectum, a cause of involuntary contraction. 5th. We know the serious consequences that arise from giving emetics and cathartics in too large doses. 6th. A glass of tepid water often does not produce vomiting when a pint will bring it on powerfully, &c. &c.
The artificial stimuli are in general all the bodies in nature. Such is in fact the essence of organic contractility, that a muscle because it is in contact with a body to which it is not accustomed, instantly contracts. If the muscles are not irritated by the organs that surround them and with which they are in relation, it is because habit has blunted the sensation which arises from this relation. But when these organs change their modifications, when extracted from the body of the animal, they become cold, and are afterwards applied to the organic muscles laid bare, they will make them contract.
Caloric, by its absence which constitutes cold, as by its presence from which arises heat, can equally excite the muscles and in general all the organs. At the instant we open the thorax or the pericardium of a living animal, the heart is agitated with a suddenly increased force; it is because the air acts upon it, and it passes from the temperature of the body to another which is different. All the aeriform fluids, light, all fluids, &c. are stimuli of the muscles. If we see the heart emptied of blood, the stomach and intestines deprived of the substances that ordinarily enter them, contract with more or less force when they have been taken out of the body, it is because the surrounding medium, and the substances with which it is charged, contribute to produce this effect; they are then the stimuli of these organs.
In general the artificial stimuli act in different ways; 1st, by their simple contact; 2d, by tearing or cuttingmechanically the fibres; 3d, by tending to combine with them; 4th, there are some of whose mode of action we are completely ignorant; such for example is electricity.
When the stimuli act only by simple contact, the fluids are, all things being equal, more efficacious than the solids, because they stimulate by a greater number of points; as they irritate not only the surfaces of the organ, but penetrate also into the interstices of the fibres. The solids produce an effect in proportion to the extent of their excitement, to the greater or less pressure that they exert, to their density, their softness, &c. They are almost always fluid substances that nature employs for stimuli in the ordinary state.
Tearing is a mode of excitement more active than contact. The heart, the intestines often inert when they are only touched by the scalpel, contract powerfully when the point of it excites them. Cutting produces a less sensible effect than tearing. Cut transversely, the fibres oscillate and are agitated only by the sensible organic contractility, whilst by the contractility of texture they experience an evident retraction.
Chemical excitement is, in the greatest number of cases, the most advantageous; but it is necessary here to distinguish that which belongs to the horny hardening, from that which is the effect of irritability brought into action. 1st. Plunge a frog without skin and alive into a concentrated acid; instantly every thing is disorganized; the reagent acts so strongly, that we can distinguish neither horny hardening nor contractility. 2d. Weaken the acid a little and plunge into it, the inferior extremities only of a frog; in an instant they stiffen by the contraction of the extensors, which overcome the flexors; for in this experiment, this is almost a constant phenomenon; withdraw the animal; its thighs remain immoveable, life has been extinguished in them; the contraction that has come on is a horny hardening, and not a vital phenomenon. Adead frog plunged into the same liquor experiences the same phenomenon. 3d. Weaken the acid still more; the instant the animal is plunged into it its limbs contract; but relaxation succeeds the contractions; these are alternate motions; it is the irritability that begins to be put into action. Yet if the acid is not very weak, some marks of the horny hardening still remain, and the animal has a stiffness in the motions of the inferior extremities, the evident result of the first degree of this horny hardening. 4th. Finally, if the acid is very weak, it becomes a simple irritant which puts in action the sensible organic contractility, without altering the texture of the fibres; the animal after coming out of the fluid preserves the same power of motion.
These experiments which it would be easy to multiply upon animals with warm blood, but which I have never attempted upon them, evidently show what belongs to the horny hardening, and what is the effect of vital contraction. Yet there is not an exact limit between them, and there is one degree of weakness of the acid in which these two causes of motions are confounded.
There is a mode of excitement to which authors have not paid attention; it may be called negative; it is that of which I spoke just now on the subject of caloric, the privation of which is oftentimes a very active stimulant. In the different experiments that I have had occasion to make, this has frequently struck me. Apply a stimulant to a muscle, it contracts; but at the end of some time the motion ceases, though the contact continues; remove the stimulant, the motion frequently returns in an instant. In general, nothing is more common in the heart, the intestines, &c. than their contractions ceasing under the continued action of a stimulant, and returning instantly upon its absence. I confess that this phenomenon is not as invariable and constant as that of the contraction produced by the application of the stimulus which succeeds a stateof non-excitement; but this happens very often. We might say that the organic sensibility is in this case like the animal, that every new state affects it, whether it be positive or negative. The passage from non-excitement to excitement is more lively; but the opposite passage is not less when it is sudden. Moreover this manner of describing the sensible organic contractility in exercise, deserves some further experiments.
The sensible organic contractility, considered in the organ in which it has its seat, exhibits numerous varieties which are relative; 1st, to the diversity of texture; 2d, to age; 3d, to sex; 4th, to temperament, &c.
The animal contractility is everywhere the same in the voluntary muscles, because their organization is uniform. All things being equal as to the number and length of the fibres, the phenomena of contraction are exactly the same everywhere; here, on the contrary, the varieties of texture inevitably produce varieties in the vital properties.
Each involuntary muscle is at first especially in relation with the fluid which ordinarily acts as its stimulus. The blood alone can regularly support the motions of the heart. Let this fluid be altered in any manner, the contractions become irregular. All foreign substances forced into the veins produce this phenomenon. The urine, which supports with harmony the motions of the bladder, would disturb those of the heart, if it circulated in its cavities. The blood, more soft in appearance than the urine, can agitate convulsively the bladder, if it happens to be in it. I took care with Desault of a patient affected for a long time with retention of urine, and whom he had cut for a very large stone. After the operation, the urineremained stagnant in the bladder as long as it was alone, but when a little blood entered this organ, it contracted involuntarily and the bloody urine was evacuated. The excrements, which could continue for a long time in the rectum without making it contract, would make the stomach heave in an instant, &c. All these phenomena are to be referred to varieties of sensibility of the mucous membranes, varieties which we shall notice again. They prove evidently that each muscle has a degree of organic contractility which is peculiar to it, and that this or that fluid of the economy can exclusively, in a natural state, put it in exercise in a regular manner.
Foreign fluids exhibit the same result; the emetic which makes the stomach contract, is injected with impunity into the bladder; purgatives do not produce vomiting, &c. This relation of foreign fluids with the sensible organic contractility takes place, whether, as in the preceding case, these fluids are applied to the mucous surfaces corresponding to the muscles, or whether they come to the muscles by the circulation, as the experiments have proved which were made in the last age upon the introduction of medicinal substances into the veins; experiments of which Haller has collected a great number of results. We have seen in these experiments, the circulation present to all the organs sometimes an emetic, and the stomach alone contracts; sometimes a purgative, and the intestines only enter into action, &c. Taken in by cutaneous absorption, medicinal substances occasion the same phenomenon. Applied by friction, purgatives, emetics, &c. do not make all the organic muscles contract, though the circulation presents them to all, but only those with which their sensibility is in relation.
In the various affections of which they are the seat, we see the organic muscles having each a peculiar mode of irritation answer to each stimulus, and remaining deaf, if we may so say, to the voice of the others.
Age modifies wonderfully the sensible organic contractility. In infancy it is very evident; the muscles answer with extreme ease to the stimuli; the bladder retains the urine with difficulty; children void it in sleep involuntarily; the heart contracts with a rapidity of which the pulse is the measure; all the digestive phenomena are more prompt; hence there is less interval between the returns of hunger. It is a phenomenon analogous to that of the voluntary muscles, in which the rapidity of the motions is found, in the first age, connected with their small degree of force.
After infancy, the susceptibility of the muscles to answer to their stimuli, is constantly diminishing; thus all the great phenomena of organic life are continually becoming slower. The number of pulsations, the duration of digestion, the longer continuance of the urine, &c. are the thermometer of this slowness.
In old age the whole is weakened; the action of the organic muscles gradually diminishes. Those of the bladder and rectum are the most exposed to lose their contractile faculty; hence the retention of urine, which is a frequent companion of old age; hence also the accumulation of fecal matters above the anus, a disease almost as common as the first at this age of life, though it has received less attention from practitioners. Rich people and those accustomed to the luxury of the table are especially subject to it. I have seen much of it, as much even as of retention of urine, in the last year of the practice of Desault. The intestines and the stomach languish more slowly in their functions. It is the heart which resists the most; it is the ultimum moriens, as it has been the first in exercise; the duration of its pulsations measures exactly the duration of organic life.
Temperament modifies in a remarkable manner organic contractility. We know that in some the pulsations are more frequent, the digestive and urinary phenomena more rapid; that in others, every thing is marked by more slowness in organic life; now these varieties have evidently their primitive source in the varieties of the contractility of the heart, the stomach, the intestines, &c. which have under this relation a great influence in the difference of the temperaments. With respect to this there are two essential observations to be made; 1st. The varieties of force of the organic muscles do not always coincide with those of the muscles of animal life. Thus we see an individual with feebly developed exterior forms, with an evident weakness of the muscles of the extremities, whilst the activity of digestion, of the urinary evacuations, &c. announces the greatest energy in the sensible organic contractility. I would remark with regard to this, that the heart is more frequently in relation of force with the external muscles than the stomach, the intestines and the bladder. A full pulse, well developed, is usually found with an athletic constitution; whilst often this constitution is united in the same subject to a feeble gastric system, and especially the force of this gastric system is frequently connected with external weakness. This fact, which the different temperaments demonstrate to us in man, is evident in the series of animals. Those who, like the carnivorous ones, have a very powerful animal muscular system, have the parietes of the gastric cavities like membranes. These parietes are strong in the herbivorous classes; they become very conspicuous in the gallinaceous. In general, mastication over which the animal contractility always presides, is in animals in an inverse ratio of the force of trituration of the stomach, over which the sensible organic contractility presides.
2d. The varieties of this property, relative to temperaments, exhibit another phenomenon almost always foreign to the animal muscular system. In fact in this the varieties are always general; we are able by exercise to strengthen this or that muscular region; but the differences of forces which are natural, always influence the whole system. The arms and the legs, the thorax and the abdomen are uniformly contractile in the different divisions of the muscles that belong to them. On the contrary, it is rare to see this uniformity in the involuntary muscles. One almost always predominates over the others; sometimes it is the heart, sometimes the stomach and sometimes the bladder. The gastric viscera even are frequently not all at the same level as to force. The stomach is feeble when the intestines preserve their ordinary action; and reciprocally the intestines too contractile expel immediately fecal matters and thus produce a diarrhœa, though the stomach may perform its functions well. This essential difference in the two muscular systems arises from the circumstance that the contractility of one depends upon a common centre, the brain; whilst that of the other on the contrary has its principle insulated in each organ in which it exists.
Women in general resemble children in the phenomena of sensible organic contractility. The weakness of the motions coincides with their greater rapidity in this sex, all whose internal muscles, like the external, are more delicate and less strongly developed than in man. It might be said that the contractile power of the womb has been formed at the expense of the forces of all the other organs. In experiments, females give results much less decided and always less durable than males. The motions of the heart, the stomach, the intestines, &c. cease sooner;these motions are less; it requires stronger stimuli to produce them, &c.
In winter and in cold climates, in which the cutaneous organ contracted, and having as it were the horny hardness from the impression of the surrounding air, has but a feeble action, all the internal functions more active, require more energy in the forces that preside over them; all the digestive, urinary and circulatory phenomena are more evident. I do not know that there has yet been made any comparative experiments upon irritability in the different seasons; but I am persuaded that they would give different results.
We have just described separately the stimulant and the organ stimulated; each being separate there is no effect upon the sensible organic contractility; from their union alone results the exercise of this property. What happens in this union? We know not. To wish to know it, would be to wish to know how one body attracts another, how an acid combines with an alkali, &c. In attraction, affinity and irritability, we can only trace the phenomena to the action of bodies upon each other. This action is the utmost limit of our researches.
But that which ought not to escape us here is, that in this last property, the action is never immediate. There is always between the stimulus and the organ something intermediate which receives the irritation; this intermediate organ is a delicate membrane and continuous with that of the arteries for the heart; it is a mucous surface for the gastric viscera and the bladder. This intermediate organ is more susceptible of receiving excitement than the muscle itself. I have uniformly observed that byirritating the internal surface of the heart, its contractions are greater, than by laying its texture bare externally by removing its serous covering and afterwards stimulating it. The same is true with regard to the organic muscles of the abdomen.
Is there between the intermediate organ excited and the organ which contracts, any nervous communications that transmit the impression? I think not, the cellular texture is sufficient. In fact the serous surfaces and the organic muscles have only this texture as a means of union. The life of the first is in no way connected with that of the others, since they often leave them as we shall see, and yet they can transmit excitement to them. The pericardium and the peritoneum, irritated in their portion corresponding with the organ that we wish to move, produce a contraction in it. This fact is known to all those who have made the least experiment; it is almost always in this way that we stimulate the heart, the stomach, the intestines, the bladder, &c. By carrying the stimulus over the serous surface but very lightly, and so as not to communicate the motion to the fleshy fibres, we obtain a result. Yet simple contact is not sufficient to transmit the irritation; for example, by leaving the external layer of the pericardium applied to the heart and afterwards irritating it, the organ remains immoveable. If we separate the peritoneum from above the bladder, so as to break all the cellular adhesions, and afterwards reapply and stimulate it, the same immobility is observed.
When the intermediate organ that receives the excitement is diseased, the contractility is uniformly altered. The same stimulus produces slow or rapid contractions, according as the affection raises or diminishes the sensibility of this intermediate organ. A slight inflammation of the exterior of the bladder produces a kind of incontinence of urine; that of the intestines occasions diarrhœa, &c. &c. On the contrary, old catarrhs of the bladder, the affections in which weakness of the mucous surface of this organ predominates, are the frequent causes of retention.
I would observe that the existence of this intermediate organ is a remarkable difference between the sensible organic contractility and the insensible, for this organ does not exist in this last, in which the same system receives the impression and reacts upon the body that has produced it; for example, in the glandular, serous, cutaneous systems, &c. the fluid which enters them for secretion or exhalation produces in them the sensation, which is instantly followed by the reaction. In the sensible contractility on the contrary, one system feels and another is moved. This kind of mobility is less removed from that of animal life, in which the organs of the senses and those of the motion being wholly different, are very distant from each other.
This duration is longer than that of the animal contractility. When the spinal marrow is irritated, the external muscles remain immoveable, whilst the internal ones are still in activity. There have been so many examples related of this duration, Haller has multiplied experiments so much upon this point, that there is no occasion for me to give proofs here of a fact of which no one can any longer doubt. To this duration are owing the evacuations of fecal matter and urine which often take place an instant after death; the vomitings that are observed in some subjects, if not in as evident a manner as during life, at least sufficient to raise the aliments into the mouth of the dead body, which is often completely filled with them, as I have frequently seen.
It is necessary, in relation to this duration, as in relation to that of the animal contractility, to distinguish twospecies of death; 1st, those that take place suddenly; 2d, those which are the consequence of long disease.
In every sudden death, produced either by a violent lesion of the brain, as in apoplexy, concussion, compression, effusion, &c. or by an affection of the heart, as in syncope, a wound, or a ruptured aneurism; or by a cessation of the action of the lungs, as in asphyxia from deleterious gases, a vacuum, submersion, &c. the duration of contractility is very evident; general death comes on first, then the organs die partially; each vital force is afterwards successively extinguished.
In every kind of death slowly produced, in all those especially which are preceded by a disease of weakness, it is the partial death of each organ that first takes place; each vital force is weakened and extinguished, gradually, before the cessation of them as a whole, which constitutes general death, comes on; when this death takes place, none of the lives peculiar to each organ remains, whilst most of these lives continue for a longer or shorter time after sudden death.
We cannot make these experiments upon dead bodies which we rarely have in the hospitals till fifteen hours or more after death; but by killing dogs by hunger, which, when long continued, becomes a real disease that lasts in these animals eight, ten and even twelve days, I have seen the contractility entirely extinguished at the moment of death. Dogs have been often brought to me affected with different diseases, especially three years since when there was a kind of epidemic among these animals; now by opening them at the instant of death, by killing them even some time before and thus producing a sudden death wholly different from that which happens in the sound state in which all the parts are uninjured in their functions and consequently in their vital forces, I have always seen a constant absence of contractility, or at least so greatly weakened that it appeared to be nothing.
Many physiologists have spoken of a general convulsion which comes on in the organic muscles at the instant of death, of a rising of the heart, the stomach, the intestines, &c. This excess of action is sometimes real in sudden deaths, in those especially that we produce for our experiments; it is very rare in deaths preceded by a long disease in which the patient is extinguished, as it were, insensibly, and passes gradually from life to death. It is a fault common to almost all authors, to generalize too much the facts observed under certain circumstances. Many false consequences are the results of it.
No organ receives more easily the influence of others, than the organic muscles; all however are not equally susceptible of it. The heart occupies the first rank in this respect; then comes the stomach, then the intestines, and finally the bladder. It is in this order that we shall now examine this influence.
It is a remarkable phenomenon, that every kind of affection in any degree strong, arising in the economy, alters immediately the motions of the heart. The least wound, oftentimes the slightest pain are sufficient to produce derangements in it; now these derangements are of two kinds; sometimes its action is arrested for a moment; hence syncopes, a mode of derangement which happens especially in violent and sudden pains. The vulgar expression which is employed in these cases, viz. "my heart is failing," is perfectly true. Sometimes, and this is the most common case, this action is accelerated; hence the febrile motions so frequent in all the local affections, motions purely sympathetic and which cease when the affection disappears. In many local inflammations, the evil is too circumscribed to admit an obstacle to the course of the blood, an obstacle, which according to Boerhaave, forces the heart to redouble its action to surmount it; besideswhen there is no swelling, but only pain in the part, and the febrile motion comes on, it is there clearly a sympathetic phenomenon. The increase of the action of the heart may depend no doubt upon a foreign substance, which, mixed with the blood, alters and renders it more irritating; it may be owing to an affection of the substance of the organ which disposes it to be more irritable; but it is certainly very often sympathetic, and depends upon that unknown relation which connects all our organs, upon that consensus which links together all their actions, and places them in reciprocal dependance.
I shall say as much of the stomach; though its sympathetic reaction may not be altogether as frequent as that of the heart, yet it becomes very evident under many circumstances. Most local affections, especially inflammations are accompanied with sympathetic vomitings. Various fevers have in their commencement similar vomitings. It is in the hospitals especially that we frequently observe these phenomena. Many physicians have not considered these vomitings as merely sympathetic, but as the index of a bilious affection, founded on this, that bile is then almost always thrown up. But in all the animals that I have opened, I have almost always seen the stomach when empty containing a certain quantity of this fluid which had flowed back from the duodenum; other authors have also made similar observations; so that it appears that in the state of vacuity, the existence of bile in the stomach is a natural phenomenon. Hence it is not astonishing, that in the commencement of diseases, and even in their course, the stomach being sympathetically excited and thus becoming the seat of vomiting, more or less of this fluid should be thrown up. It would be brought up even in health if vomiting is then excited by an emetic; this is what sometimes happens in the morning when the stomach is empty, if any cause foreign to an affection of the liver, as the sight of a disgusting object, produces vomiting; the bile then comes out like every thing else that is contained in the stomach. I do not say that oftentimes the liver being sympathetically excited in the commencement of diseases, does not furnish more bile, that this superabundant bile flowing into the stomach, does not make this viscus contract; but certainly this is not most commonly the case; we vomit bile as we discharge it by the anus, because it is found in the stomach and intestines, and not because it is superabundant. If vomiting was a natural function, the bilious evacuations in this way would be as natural as the greenish tinge of the excrements, which is always found in a state of health. We see then, from this, that the bilious vomitings are, in many cases, purely accessory, and that the essential phenomenon is the sympathetic contraction of the stomach.