But the influence of the alkaloid upon the spinal cord is very marked and characteristic. The reflex functions of the cord are entirely abolished, and it has been experimentally shown that this is due to a direct influence upon the cells in the anterior cornua.
In large toxic and in lethal doses the activity of the spinal cord is lowered.
The chief difference between the action of opium and morphine is due to the presence in the former of thebaine, which readily affects the more irritable spinal cord of very young children.
Furthermore, he indicated that the brain and spinal cord may be divided into separate parts, each part having a special function - one part ministering to motion, the other to sensation, and that the origin of the -nerves from one or other or both of those sources endows them with the peculiar property of the division whence they spring.
Large doses also depress the nervous system, weakening the anterior horns of grey matter in the spinal cord so as ultimately to cause complete paralysis, and also causing a partial insensibility of the cutaneous nerves of touch and pain.
Thus the tonus of the motor neurons of the spinal cord is much lessened by rupture of the great afferent root cells which normally play upon them.
His views as to the physiological functions of the spinal cord are also in agreement with recent research, and he anticipated many of the pre-eminent offices of the ductless glands which students of the present time are only beginning to discover.
The substance of the brain, spinal cord and nervetrunks is normal, but the membranes are engorged.
And what is still more, for many feet after emerging from the brain's cavity, the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the brain.
Intercostal neuralgia is pain affecting the nerves which emerge from the spinal cord and run along the spaces between the ribs to the front of the body.