tinued. The next morning all vital phenomena
had ceased.
6. Of the Effect of destroying the entire Brain
and Spinal Marrow, by successive portions, at
distant intervals.
We are led by all these experiments to consider
the results so well and so fully expressed by
Legallois in the following passage of his work :
“ C’est encore d’après les mêmes principes
qu’en détruisant la moelle successivement par
petites parties, et en mettant un certain intervalle
entre chaque destruction, on en peut détruire, sans
arrêter la circulation, une longueur beaucoup plus
grande que celle qui aurait suffi pour produire cet
effet si elle eût été détruite en une seule fois :
car la destruction d’une petite étendue de moelle,
insuffisante pour arrêter la circulation générale,
la diminue toujours beaucoup dans les parties qui
tirent leurs nerfs de la moelle détruite, et y fait,
jusqu’à un certain point, l’office d’un ligature.
De plus, les forces du coeur étant affaiblies par
cette operation, la circulation générale se concentre
et ne conserve un peu d’activité que dans
les parties voisines du coeur ; ce qui produit encore
un effet analogue.” 1
In fact, if a portion of the nervous masses be
removed, and if this be compatible with life, the
animal is reduced to a lower degree in the scale
of organized beings. It lives as a still lower
animal. And it becomes capable, on this principle,
of enduring new privations. I doubt not
that, in this manner, the whole brain and spinal
marrow may be removed, and that the animal may
live, sustained by the mere ganglionic masses, and
the cutaneous respiration.
The principle just enounced, is entirely different
from that of Legallois, that of Dr. Philip,
or that of M. Flourens. The first thinks that
the extent of the circulation is diminished, and
that an enfeebled heart may carry on a minor
circulation. The second ascribes the difference
to the mode of removing the nervous masses.
M. Flourens supposes the medulla oblongata to
be essential to the circulation, as it is to the respiration.
But I suppose that the entire circulation
continues. Ï suppose also that crushing is
equally avoided in the two experiments of re-
1 OEuvres, p. 369.