RECENT NEUROLOGICAL PROGRESS. 273 



succeeded (1869) in demonstrating by excellent experiments 

 that in the frog many reactions commonly ascribed to the 

 highest nervous centres, i.e., the cerebral hemispheres, are 

 really referable to lower (e.g., bulbo-spinal). These latter 

 remain competent for the reactions even when the higher 

 have been eliminated from the problem altogether by abso- 

 lute removal. The scope of this theme Goltz proceeded to 

 extend to mammalian physiology. He studied in mammals 

 the intrinsic powers of the spinal cord in its lowest third, 

 that being the portion most readily isolable from all higher 

 centres. The results obtained were richly instructive. 

 They revealed a plenitude of independent spinal function 

 hardly surmised before, still less admitted as doctrinal. 

 Some wide differences lay between the phenomena observed 

 in the amphibian and the mammal. One of these consists 

 in the deep prolonged depression of function, which in the 

 latter immediately succeeds infliction of the tranma {e.g. y 

 severance of the spinal cord). In Goltz's terminology 

 " shock" is much greater in the mammal, more inhibitions 

 are set up and they subside less soon. Minutes in the frog 

 become in the dog days. With faith that the two species, 

 though far apart in the vertebrate scale, are both 

 exponents of the same radical principles of action, driving, 

 it is true, a system more complex in one case than in the 

 other, Goltz finally, in 1875, began, an attempt to deter- 

 mine the possibilities of the mammalian bulbo-spinal axis 

 (including cerebellum) as a separate whole apart from 

 cerebral hemispheres altogether. The reactions of the 

 dog without cerebrum were to be studied as had been 

 those of the frog. Great experimental difficulties have 

 lain in the way ; but at last Goltz has been in a posi- 

 tion to place on record, eighteen months ago, observa- 

 tions carried out on dogs existing for long periods without 

 cerebrum. 1 



A dog without cerebrum moves, sits, rises or walks, 

 unhindered by noticeable paralysis ; he is indeed prone to 

 wander restlessly, and in his course takes heed of obstacles 



Pfluger's Archiv, vol. li., p. 570, etc. 

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