Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/51

 45 vation for the entire sympathetic system occupy but a small space at the base of the brain, two strips to wit, one on each side of the median fissure in the floor of the fourth ventricle ; of, in the rabbit, a length of about four millimeters, beginning about four or five millimeters anteriorly to the calamus scriptorius, and ending about one or two millimeters behind the level of the corpora quadrigemina. The title of such a book as Eulenburg and Guttmann's Die Pathologie des Sympathicus auf Physiolo- gische Grundlage (Berlin, 1873,) is an en- couragement to those who hope to see fruit arise from such researches as these in the way of additions to our means for meeting, or at least understanding, human disease and suffering. It has long been known (Budge, 1855) that the sympathetic nerves which supply the vessels of the head and iris do not pass directly or by the shortest possible route to this their distribution, but pass down the spinal cord for a greater or lesser distance, and then turn outwards, and pass from the anterior nerve-branches to bend upwards,