On the Agency of Nerves. 279 



Dr. Philip objects to the conclusions drawn from cases of 

 diseased nervous system, on a different ground, and one which 

 seems to me much stronger ; — that the brain and nervous system 

 in general, like other organs, may probably admit of a great degree 

 of distention and compression, — (and I would add, may undergo 

 great change of form and size by interstitial, and even by ulcer- 

 ative absorption), without its functions being materially de- 

 ranged. But the argument on which I would be understood 

 chiefly to rely, is that drawn from cases, not of disease, but of 

 original defective formation, in which we have no reason what- 

 ever to suppose that the portions of the nervous system, which 

 are wanting, ever had existed. In the common case of the 

 acephalous foetus, (for example, in Mr. Lawrence's case, here 

 referred to), the bones which form the top and sides of the skull 

 are wanting as well as the brain, and the basis of the skull is 

 covered with the common integuments ; so that it can hardly be 

 supposed, that any brain has ever existed ; and the small knob, 

 which terminated the spinal marrow in Mr. Lawrence's case, 

 instead of being the substance into which the brain had con- 

 tracted, was, in all probability, the only portion of brain that 

 ever had existed. As this child had breathed, I agree most 

 fully with Dr. Philip's conclusion, that it must have performed 

 certain mental acts ; and, in delivering lectures on Physiology, 

 I have quoted this fact, along with others, as proving that the 

 mental acts concerned in respiration, are not necessarily con- 

 nected with more than a very small portion of the base of the 

 brain, probably of the medulla oblongata ; perhaps not even with* 

 that; and I would extend the same conclusion to whatever 

 other mental acts that child could be shewn to have performed, 

 precisely on the same ground that I continue to regard that case 

 as one of many which prove that secretion and nutrition may 

 go on, independently of, very nearly, the whole of the brain. 



But if the argument drawn from the case of this foetus be ob- 

 jected to, on account of the knob at the end of the spinal marrow, 

 the same objection cannot be urged against the following cases. 



The case referred to by LeGallois in \heHistoiredeV Academic 

 Royale des Sciences for the year 1 7 1 1 , is of itself, I conceive, suf- 



