THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
191. What are the organs of the nervous system? What is the general use of this system? How does it distinguish animals from plants? What are the vegetative functions? What is the gray matter? Its use? The white matter? Its use?
193. Describe the brain. What is its office? Its size? How does it vary? Illustrate. Name its two divisions.
194, 195. Describe the cerebrum. The convolutions. The membranes which bind the brain together. What can you say of the quantity of blood which goes to the brain? What does it show? What do the convolutions indicate? What is the use of the two halves of the brain? What theories have been advanced concerning it? Is every injury to the brain fatal? Illustrate. Compare the human brain with the brains of some animals.
196. What is the effect of removing the cerebrum? Describe the cerebellum. What is the arbor vitæ? What does this part of the brain control? What are the peculiar functions of the cerebellum? Give Dr. Bastian's remarks.
197. What is the effect of an injury to the cerebellum? Describe the spinal cord. What is the medulla oblongata? Describe the nerves. Is each part of the body supplied with its own nerve? Prove it.
198. What are the motory nerves? The sensory? When will motion be lost and feeling remain, and vice versa? What is meant by a transfer of pain? Illustrate.
199. Name the three classes of nerves. What are the spinal nerves? Describe the origin of the spinal nerve.
199-201. What are the cranial nerves? How many pairs are there? Describe them.
201, 202. Describe the sympathetic system. What is its use? How does the brain control all the vital processes? What is meant by the crossing of the cords? What is the effect? What exception in the seventh pair of cranial nerves?
203, 204. What is reflex action? Give illustrations. Give instances of the unconscious action of the brain. [Footnote: The cerebellum has its unconscious action in the processes of respiration and in the involuntary movements which are made in response to the senses, as in winking, starting back at a sound, etc. The cerebrum acts automatically in oases familiar to all. A large part of our mental activity consists of this unconscious brain work. There are many cases in which the mind has obviously reasoned more clearly and more successfully in this automatic condition, when left entirely to itself, than when we have been cudgeling our brains, so to speak, to get the solution. Oliver Wendell Holmes has aptly expressed this fact. "We wish," he says, "to remember something in the course of conversation. No effort of the will can reach it; but we say, 'Wait a minute, and it will come to me,' and we go on talking. Some minutes later, the idea we are in search of comes all at once into the mind, delivered like a prepaid parcel, or like a foundling in a basket, laid at the door of consciousness. How it came there, we know not. The mind must have been at work, groping and feeling for it in the dark; it can not have come of itself. Yet, all the while, our consciousness, so far as we are conscious of our consciousness, was busy with other thoughts."
Some interesting personal experiences upon this point are given in an article entitled "The Antechamber of Consciousness," by Francis Speir, Jr., in the Popular Science Monthly for March, 1888.] Can there be feeling or motion in the lower limbs when the spinal cord is destroyed? What does the story told by Dr. John Hunter show? Give illustrations of the independent action of the spinal cord in animals. What are the uses of reflex action?
205. State its value in the formation of habits. How does the brain grow? What laws govern it? What must be the effect of constant light reading? Of overstudy or mental labor?
206. State the relation of sleep to repair and waste. How many hours does each person need? What kind of work requires most sleep?
206-208. What is the influence of sunlight on the body? Illustrate. Name some of the wonders of the brain.
208-213. What four stages are there in the effect of alcohol on the nervous system? Describe each. Does alcohol confer any permanent strength? What is the physiological effect of alcohol on the brain? On the mental and moral powers? What is the Delirium Tremens? Should a man be punished for a crime he commits while drunk?
214-218. What are the principal constituents of tobacco? What are its physiological effects? Who are most likely to escape injury? Is tobacco a food? What is its influence upon youth? Why are cigarettes specially injurious? What effect does tobacco have on the sensibilities? Name illustrations of the injurious effect of tobacco on young men.
219-221. How is opium obtained? What is its physiological effect? Which form of using it is most injurious? Can one give up the use of opium when he pleases? How do people sometimes take opium without knowing it?
221. What is the harmful influence of chloral hydrate? Describe its different physiological effects.
222. Compare its influence with that of alcohol. How is chloroform obtained? Does its use require great caution? Illustrate its effects.
223, 224. What is cocaine? What is its value? Its physiological effect? Its dangers?
331-333. What is the effect of extreme anger? Give the physiological explanation of this deterioration. What two organs particularly suffer? Illustrate. To what cause are many suicides referable? How can one secure a calm and tranquil life? What is the effect of forcing the brain in childhood?
334. Illustrate. How should a child be taught?
334, 335. Why should we not exhaust our energies to the last degree? What warnings does Nature give us? Do stimulants supply force? What is the effect of mental exhaustion? Which is the most common, overwork or worry? Most dangerous? What is worry? Its effect? What other causes often induce insanity?
336-338. State some curiosities of sleep. Some conditions necessary to sound and healthful slumber. How may we acquire the habit of early rising?
338, 339. Give some of the results of dungeon life.
339-347. What can you say of the growth and power of poison habits? Illustrate. How does physiological ignorance often cause intemperance? What is the usual result of a stimulant habit? In what virtue lies the peril of narcotics? Balance the good and the evil in their use. Illustrate how death often results from chloroform and chloral. What common result is worse than death? Compare the demoralization in the cases of the opium user and the alcohol drinker. What principle of heredity attaches to the use of opium? Give instances of deaths from tobacco, opium, etc. What can you say of cigarette smoking? Chloral hydrate? The bromides? Absinthe? Hasheesh?