EDUCATIOX OF BRAIX-CELLS. 203 



at a period of life when it is not easy to learn. What the new train- 

 ing and teaching does is not so much to impart infoi'mation as to foster 

 the growth of a new crop from the old seed, just as an after-crop may 

 be procured by breaking up an overstocked soil and applying the 

 stimulus of manure. It is always possible that in the first process of 

 instruction more seed may have been sown than germinated. Some 

 good mental seed doubtless falls on barren ground, and it is perhaps 

 due to the vitality and subsequent germination of this seed, that ideas 

 which we do not seem to have cultivated deepen as the years go on. 



Meanwhile I fancy it is as the progeny of old nuclei that the phys- 

 ical' bases of a revived memory are restored during general recovery in 

 cases of the class before us. It seldom happens that the reeducating 

 process needs to be very explicit or prolonged. Far less teaching than 

 would have sufficed to implant the knowledge originally Avill cause it 

 to reappear. In cases where the cells only are destroyed and their cen- 

 ters of vitality remain, it may even happen that the mere establish- 

 ment of health will suffice to bring about complete restoration. When 

 the new cells grow, the old memories will be revived. This is what 

 takes place in ordinary cases, when, although no especial pains are 

 taken to reeducate, the " lost " knowledge returns. The completeness of 

 the recovery will probably depend on the vigor of the first growth, and 

 is doubtless governed by the same law which determines permanence 

 or tendency to revert to an old type in the propagation of recently im- 

 pressed or acquired qualities of species or family. Ideas, or an organic 

 tendency to form particular conceptions, are certainly transmitted from 

 parent to child. The cells first developed in a foetal cerebrum are 

 probably imbued Avith the qualities and properties of the brains of the 

 mother and father, in different proportions. The transmission of germs 

 of mental character which slumber through one generation and awaken 

 with all their ancestral energy in the next is a recognized fact. It will 

 therefore probably happen that the new crop does not at first present 

 all the features of that which was blighted by disease, but develop 

 part of its characteristics later on. Thus vigorous health at an ad- 

 vanced period of life will sometimes produce a perfecting of the re- 

 covery commenced, but not consummated, years before. 



Cases of the first and third class are very likely to be confounded 

 in practice. Final destruction may be assumed when, perhaps, a tract 

 has been isolated without being destroyed. In this way I venture to 

 think hopeless dementia is occasionally diagnosed, Avhen what has 

 happened is the disconnection, or throwing out of the circuit of cere- 

 bral energy, of a particular tract or stratum of element ; and, unless 

 watched, partial recovery, susceptible of treatment, may happen with- 

 out being observed and helped at the critical moment. 



Treatment for the first class of cases is valueless ; for the second, 

 the cure must consist in the reproduction of brain-cells, or rather, as I 

 have suggested, the development of a new crop from the denuded 



