Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1883 — OUR BRALNS AND NERVES. [ARTICLE]

OUR BRALNS AND NERVES.

What They Are and How Dio Lewis Explains It In an Intelligent Manner. «... If you prick a tree it keeps very still; no cry and no -wincing. But if you prick a dog he yelps and jumps. The tree has no nerves. This explains why the tree keeps so still and why the dog makes such a fuss. A nerve is a white thread running between two different parts of the body. Its business is to carry messages. You pinch the end of a dog’s tail. There are white threads running frdm the encl Of a dog’s tail to his brain. The message sent over these is the following: To Headquarters iri the Skull. There is an awful pinching here. Tipbndoftail. When this message reaches the brain and is recorded and considered there, the brain sends back at once the following message: Tipbndoftail, Esq.: Jerk away from the pinch quick. Commander-In-Chief. Headquarters. The tail is jerked away and everything is lovely again. It is not the same white thread which conveys the pinching message that brings back the jerking message. They look alike, but they are not alike. The one that carries the message from the end of the tail to the brain is called a nerve of feeling, and the white thread which brings back the message from the brain to the tail, commanding it to jerk, is called a nerve of motion. You will say that these messages pass between a dog’s tail And his head instantaneously—as quick as lightning; that there is no time for framing formal messages. You are mistaken., The nature of the nerve force employed in conveying messages is not understood. Before the discovery of electricity it was thought that the “animal spirits” circulated in the nerves. Sime the -discovery of, electricity some physiologists liave held that the nerve fluid is electricity, and that the nerves or white - threads are simply conductors and electricity. But no one h s yet been able to discover electricity in the nervous system. Besides, the difference in the velocity of the electric fluid ami the nerve fluid is so great that one can hardly believe they are the same. The experiments of Wheatstone prove that electricity moves at the rate of 445,000 miles in a second; while Helmholtz has demonSti'ated that the velocity of the-nerve-fluid is not more than eighty-eight feet in a second. It would take the nerve fluid more than 200 days tapass through the distance which Wheatstone’s experiments prove electricity achieves hi one second. The supposition that the two are identical, in view of this amazing difference in velocity, seems absurd. If a dog were 1,000 miles long it woukV take sixteen hours for a message to go from the end of his tail and back again. You might cut off his tail and cari y it from New York to Cleveland before the news could get to the dog’s head 1 and a message come back to jerk. And when the message to jerk arrived there would be no tail there to jerk. ( It should be remarked here that messages travel faster on the nerves of some people than on those of others. When you tell a good story, five persons, willlaugh at once, but" onei solemn-looking man will remain solemn some seconds, and then double himself up in convulsions. It took longer for the thing to work on him, but such people have one advantage—-a funny story works strong on them when it does reach the brain. I might as well say just here that there are several kinds of nerves. One kind conveys messages of feeling. We call these of feeling.” Another kind conveys messages commanding motion. We call them “nerves of motion.” Another kind attends to the business of nutrition, building up and taking down the parts of the body. We call those “nerves of assimilation.” Then there is another sort called “nerves of special sense.” There are. four of these, known respectively as nerves of hearing, sight, smell and taste. Most people think, if they come upon a nerve in dissecting the body,that it is of course, a nerve of feeling. But now you see that the chances are six to one that the nerve you are examining is not engaged in feeling, but in quite a different business. It may*be in the molion trade, or it may be a member of the firm of special senses. i When the message from the dog’s tail arrives in his brain it there undergoes a wonderful manipulation before the message to jerk is ready to be sent i back. The brain not only, feels, but thinks, contrives, judges and wills. It takes a marvelous thing to do all that. In all God’s universe, the brain alone can perform these feats. The brain is a miracle-worker. It reaches out its hands, takes from the earth a mass of iron ore, rough and dirty, touches it with its magic wand, and it is changed into ingenious surgical instruments. It was worth 5 cents. It is now worth SIOO.