THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF NEUROPHYSIOLOGY 45 



FIG. 30. Lejt: Magendie's technique for sectioning the fifth nerve in the living rabbit. The dissec- 

 tion is to demonstrate the insertion of his instrument. On the rabbit's right, the probe is seen entering 

 the base of the siiull and reaching the trunk of the fifth nerve at H. On the animal's left, the end 

 of the instrument is seen at E and the sectioned nerve at G. (From : Bernard, C. Leqons sur la Pkysiologie 

 el la Pathologif du Sysleme .^eri'eux. Paris: Bailliere, 1858. Right: pigeon deprived of its cerebral hemi- 

 spheres in position described by Flourens. (From: Luciani, L. Human Physiology, English ed. Lon- 

 don: Macmillan, 1915.) 



He reached this conclusion from studying the dis- 

 turbance of gait in a duck-* from which he had re- 

 removed the cerebellum unilaterally. He followed 

 these experiments with bilateral destructions and 

 noticed forced movements. The great contribution 

 towards our modern knowledge of cerebellar mecha- 

 nisms came from Luciani of Florence whose book // 

 Cervellelto (259) is a classic, as is also his te.xtbook of 

 physiology (260). 



Magendie in the obsersations he made on decere- 

 brate animals (261) anticipated Sherrington by an 

 accurate and detailed description of decerebrate 

 rigidity in rabbits. This was in the days before the 

 discovery of anesthesia and Magendie was severely 



.■59. Luciani, Luigi (1840-1921). // Cervelletto. Florence, 1891. 

 260. Luciani, L. Human Physiology. English translation by F. A. 



Welby. London: Macmillan, 1915. 

 ■261. Magkndie, F. Sur le siege du mouvement et du sentiment 



dans la moelle epiniere. J. phvsiol. cxper. ct path. 3; 153, 



1823. 



criticized for his practice of vivisection. But extirpa- 

 tion experiments on animals could give no clue to the 

 cortical representation of speech. This had to come 

 from clinical observation with studies at autopsy. 

 Gall had placed language in the anterior lobes and the 

 first clinical reports seemed to confirm this. In fact, 

 the great surge of work aiming to establish localized 

 centers in the human brain began with the speech 

 center. In his studies of encephalitis Bouillaud (262}, 

 a pupil of Magendie and later Professor of Medicine, 

 had reasoned that the anterior lobes of the brain were 

 necessary for speech and went on to ob.serve that 

 other focal lesions of the brain caused localized im- 



262. Bouillaud, Jean Baptiste (i 796-1 881). Traite clinique et 

 physiologique de V encephalitt' ou inflammation du cerveau. Paris : 

 Bailliere, 1825. 



^' Sherrington in quoting this experiment mistranslated 

 Magendie's word 'canard' as 'water-dog.' 



