182 ACQUIRED CHARACTERS sec. 



anecdotes of no value as evidence. They attempt to deprive 

 the experiments of Brown- Sequard, confirmed by others 

 (Westphal and Obersteiner), on the inheritance of artificial 

 epilepsy in guinea-pigs, of importance, by explaining ^ " that 

 this transmission of acquired epilepsy to the following genera- 

 tion, the occurrence of which is not to be denied, depends 

 not on heredity, but on inoculation of the germ, on the trans- 

 ference of living disease-producing organisms." 



Since, however, this hereditary epilepsy was produced by 

 partial or complete section of the spinal cord, or by division 

 of the n&rmis ischiadicus, when epileptic attacks could only 

 be produced some weeks after the operation by pinching the 

 skin on the lateral parts of the head and neck (epileptogenous 

 zone) ; since Westphal, who expressly states that he entered 

 upon these experiments with distrust, was able to produce 

 inheritable epilepsy by blows wdth a hammer on the head of 

 the animals — that assumption seems to be entirely unfounded. 

 But Ziegier, although he will not contest the possibility that 

 a transmissible disease due to infection may have followed 

 the operation, prefers to try to diminish the force and im- 

 portance of the experiments of Brown - Sequard, Westphal, 

 and Obersteiner, by asking if the guinea-pigs on which the 

 operations were made may not have been already predisposed 

 to disease ; if the appearance of epilepsy may not have been 

 due to general decrepitude, rather than to the inheritance of 

 a disease experimentally produced.^ 



If epilepsy can actually be produced by blows upon the 

 head, and then inherited, as Westphal states (it showed itself, 

 according to that author, in the two young ones of a guinea-pig 



1 Weismann, Biolog. CentralhlaU, 15th March 1886 ; Westphal, Berlin. 

 Klin. Wochenschrift, 1871 ; Obersteiner, Med. Jahrhucher, 1875. 



^ E. Ziegier : Konnen erworbene pathologische Eigenschaften vererht iverden , 

 und wie entstehen erhliche Krankheiten und Missbildungen ? Jena, G. Fischer, 

 1886. Published separately, from the Beitrdgen zur pathol. Anatomic w. Physio- 

 logie of Ziegier and Nauwerck, Bd. i. 



