FUNCTIONS OF THE SPINAL CORD. 647 



an intelligent witness, that he has seen a very accomplished pianist complete 

 the performance of a piece of music in the same state. 1 A case has been 

 mentioned to him by his friend Dr. William Budd, of a patient laboring 

 under the form of epilepsy iu which there was simply a temporary suspen- 

 sion of consciousness without convulsion, who, whenever the paroxysm came 

 on, persisted in the kind of movement in which he was engaged at the mo- 

 ment ; and thus on one occasion fell into the water through continuing to 

 walk onwards, and frequently (being a shoemaker by trade) wounded his 

 fingers with the awl in his hand, by a repetition of the movement by which 

 he was endeavoring to pierce the leather. Such facts as these add great 

 strength to the probability, that when the Cerebral power is not suspended, 

 but merely directed into another channel, as in the states of Reverie or 

 Abstraction, and the attention is entirely drawn off from the movements of 

 locomotion, the continuance of these is due to the independent automatic 

 action of the Spinal Cord, the direction being given to them by the Sensory 

 Ganglia. This point, however, will be more fully considered hereafter; at 

 present it may be remarked, that, when a regular train of movements is 

 being performed under such conditions, every single action may be probably 

 regarded as affording the stimulus to the next ; each contact of the foot with 

 the ground, in the act of walking, exciting the muscular contractions which 

 constitute the next step; 2 and each movement of the musician prompting 

 that which has customarily followed it, after the same fashion. 



511. Now iu all these cases it seems reasonable to infer that the same kind 

 of connection between the excitor and motor nerves comes to be formed by 

 a process of gradual development, as originally exists in the nervous systems 

 of those animals whose movements are entirely automatic ; this portion of 

 the nervous system of Man being so constituted, as to grow to the mode iu 

 which it is habitually called into play. Such an idea is supported by all 

 that we know of the formation and persistence of habits of uervo-muscular 

 action. For it is a matter of universal experience that such habits are far 

 more readily acquired during the periods of infancy, childhood, and youth, 

 than they are after the attainment of adult age; and that the earlier they 

 are acquired, the more tenaciously are they retained. Now it is whilst the 

 organism is growing most rapidly, and the greatest amount of new tissue is 

 consequently being formed, that we should expect such new connections to 

 be most readily established ; and it is then, too, that the assimilative pro- 

 cesses most readily take on that new mode of action ( 336), which often 

 becomes so completely a "second nature/' as to keep up a certain acquired 

 mode of nutrition through the whole subsequent life. It is an additional 

 and most important confirmation of this view, to find that when a nerve- 

 trunk has been cut across, the re-establishment of its conductive power, 

 which takes place after a certain interval, is effected, not by the reunion of 

 the divided fibres, but by the development of a new set of peripheral fibres iu 

 the place of the old ones (which undergo a gradual degeneration), this de- 

 velopment proceeding from the point of section, and the central fibres 



1 In playing by memory on a musical instrument, the muscular sense often sug- 

 gests the sequence of movements with more certainty than the auditory ; and since, 

 the impressions derived from the muscles may prompt and regulate succession,!! 

 movements, without affecting the consciousness, there is no such improbability in the 

 above statement as might at first sight appear. 



2 The truth of this view seems to the Author to be strongly supported by observa- 

 tion of the mode in which Infants learn to walk : for it may often he observed that 

 long before they can stand, they will instinctively perform the movements of walk- 

 ing, if they be so supported that the feet touch the ground. 



