Synopsis
Excerpt from The Origin and Development of the Nervous System: From a Physiological Viewpoint
Concerning the embryonic development and the evolution of nervous structure a large body of fact and hypothesis is at hand, but the problem of the origin of the nervous system as an organ of excitation, transmission, and integration has received much less attention. Irri tability, that is, excitability, is commonly regarded as a fundamental property of living protoplasm, and it is often asserted that the nervous system does not repre sent a new function, added at a certain stage of develop ment, or of evolution, to the original functional complex of the organism, but rather a development of the primi tive mechanisms of excitation and transmission. Not infrequently, however, particularly within recent years, it has been maintained that the primary factors in physiological correlation and integration consist of chemical substances and their transportation by one means or another. These two conceptions are difi'icult to reconcile, for the one implies that excitation and transmission are primary factors in physiological corre lation, the other that they are of secondary origin. As a matter of fact, we know that excitation and transmis sion occur in protoplasm in the absence of anything which we can identify as nervous structure; moreover, it is difficult to conceive a living organism incapable of at least some degree of excitation and transmission.
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