Sympathectomy in the Goat.

Abstract

Interest in the relation between the sympathetic nervous system and the striated limb musculature was revived by the experiments of Hunter and Royle.1 They described a loss of plastic tonus in the hind limb of the goat and in the wing of the fowl following the severence of the sympathetic connections to these parts. By the loss of plastic tonus they meant the loss of an intrinsic muscular supporting mechanism controlled by the sympathetic nervous system which functioned to maintain the position of the limb after the ordinary somatically innervated fibers had ceased contracting. Later experiments by other workers who used the dog and cat chiefly, failed to confirm these observations. We are reporting the results of unilateral right or left lumbar sympathectomy performed on 7 young normal goats.Our general procedure was (1) examination of the normal animal, (2) left or right lumbar sympathectomy, (3) comparison of normal and operated sides following sympathectomy, (4) decerebration, (5) comparison of normal...