54 Experimental Zoology 



animals." This result is also said by Brown- Sequard to be 

 inherited. 



I have given somewhat fully these remarkable results of 

 Brown-Sequard because the experiments appear to have been 

 carried out with such care, and the results are given in such 

 detail that it seems that they must be accepted as establishing 

 the inheritance of acquired characters. 



Moreover, similar results have been obtained by other in- 

 vestigators. They have been corroborated in part by Ober- 

 steiner.^ Westphal has produced epilepsy by striking the heads 

 of the animals with a hammer, and has found that the young 

 are often epileptic.^ Still more important are the experiments 

 of Romanes. His conclusions, it is true, are much more cau- 

 tious, and his statements more guarded than those of Brown- 

 Sequard; yet on the whole they confirm Brown-Sequard's 

 claims. 



Weismann has attempted to discredit these results on the 

 ground that we are still ignorant of the cause of epilepsy. The 

 possibihty that it is a bacterial disease must be admitted, he 

 claims, and, if this is the case, the bacteria themselves may be 

 transmitted to the young during their uterine existence. It is 

 supposed, in fact, that other diseases may be inherited by direct 

 contagion through the germ- cells of the father or the mother. 

 This objection is, however, purely formal, and as long as we do 

 not know that epilepsy is a bacterial disease that is contagious 

 in the way supposed, the objection may raise a doubt but cannot 

 set aside the results.^ 



There are some quite recent experiments that may have a 

 very direct bearing on the questions here raised. In a paper 

 by Charrin, Delamare, and Moussu, the inherited effects of 

 injury are described. The hver or the kidneys of pregnant rab- 

 bits and guinea pigs were injured, which caused these organs 



* Oesterreichische medicinische Jahrbiicher, p. 179, 1875. 



^ See Weismann, "Essays," Vol. I, p. 323. 



^ It has also been suggested by some more recent authors that epilepsy occurs 

 as the result of a weakening of the general condition either direct or inherited. 

 This view will not explain the localized inheritance claimed by Brown-Sequard. 



