The function of the recurrent laryngeal nerve : from experimental studies in the Biological Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University / by Frank Donaldson, jr.

  • Donaldson, Frank.
Date:
1886
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The function of the recurrent laryngeal nerve : from experimental studies in the Biological Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University / by Frank Donaldson, jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Extracted from the American Journal of the Medical Sciences for July, 1886. THE FUNCTION OF THE RECURRENT LARYNGEAL NERVE. FROM EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES IN THE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.1 By FRANK DONALDSON, Jr., B.A., M.D., CHIEF OF CLINIC FOR THROAT ANI) CHEST, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, AND LATE SCHOLAR IN BIOLOGY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. The mode of action of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, supplying as it does muscles so important in their use, both phonatory and respiratory, and yet so opposed in their action, is at present a much mooted point. That this nerve supplies all the intrinsic muscles of the larynx with the exception of the crico-thyroid, and that it is chiefly a motor nerve, are well-known facts. It is a physiological fact, also, that the internal thyro- arytenoids, the lateral crico-arytenoids, and the transverse arytenoid, are the adductor (the phonatory) muscles of the larynx, and that the pos- terior crico-arytenoids are the abductor (the respiratory) muscles of that organ. As we have said, all these muscles receive their nerve supply from the recurrent laryngeal. This nerve, then, must contain two sets of fibres, which innervate muscles of separate and distinct functions. How, and under what circumstances, does the constrictor or respiratory function of this nerve assert itself? How are these functions to be differentiated? Whence do the two distinct sets of impulses come? “Is the origin of the nerve filaments, which compose the recurrent laryngeal nerve, as distinct as their function.” This important question has, up to the present time, been unanswered, and we know of no experiments directly on this point until Dr. F. H.