Abstract
Langendorff 1 reported that in one experiment on a cat one hundred and five days after the removal of the superior cervical ganglion, the paralytic symptoms of the eye disappeared, and stimulation of the cervical sympathetic nerve caused the typical effects. Microscopically no nerve cells could be detected, and Langendorff assumed that there was a union between the preganglionic and postganglionic nerve fibers. Langley, 2 on the other hand, reported, about one year before Langendorff, an experiment on a cat in which twenty-three months after the removal of the superior cervical ganglion stimulation of the cervical sympathetic did not produce the usual effects, and on microscopical examination some postganglionic nerve fibers were found to have been regenerated; but there were neither nerve cells nor any union between the postganglionic and preganglionic nerve fibers. Later Langley and Anderson 1 repeated the experiment on eight cats.
In six of the animals, which lived between one hundred and eighty-three and four hundred and seventy-six days, the paralytic symptoms remained permanent, and stimulation of the cervical sympathetic caused no effect. In two of the cases there was some decrease in the paralytic symptoms, and stimulation of the cervical sympathetic caused some effect, but microscopical examination showed that in both cases not all of the nerve cells had been removed.
All the above experiments were made on cats, which have a large ganglion. The gap between the postganglionic and preganglionic nerve fibers in the cat is nearly one centimeter. In the rabbit the ganglion is barely three millimeters long, and there might perhaps be a better chance for a final union of the nerve fibers of the two poles of the ganlglion.
Full grown, grey, male rabbit. Left superior cervical ganglion removed October 14, 1904. Animal died April 23, I 907.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.