2 34 TRANSMISSION OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 



making a slight cut in the skin, on the occasion of a small operation 

 on the neck, Ziegler sent an apparently healthy guinea-pig into a 

 severe epileptic fit. But there seems considerable difference of 

 opinion as to this nervousness of captive guinea-pigs. 



(5) It seems to us that the original modification was too violent 

 to afford satisfactory data in connection with the present discussion. 

 No matter how neatly the operations were effected, the partial sec- 

 tion of the spinal cord, the cutting of the sciatic or of the cervical 

 sympathetic nerve, the removal of the superior cervical ganglion, 

 the injuring of the restiform body, imply very serious injuries, and 

 it is hard to believe that others were not implied in some of the ex- 

 periments — e.g. on the restiform body. But if a modification is 

 violent it may disturb the whole organism, nutritive * and repro- 

 ductive t functions alike, and it may naturally lead to abnormality 

 in the offspring. Especially may it lead to general decrepitude, 

 which, it seems to us, was the most frequent result. At the same 

 time this hardly touches the most distinctive feature of the ex- 

 periments, that sometimes there appeared in the offspring morbid 

 conditions precisely similar to the results of the injury inflicted on 

 the parents. It may be, however, that only particular parts of the 

 body are susceptible to the influence of the original disturbance. 



Prof. T. H. Morgan (1903, p. 257) directs attention to the experi- 

 ments of Charrin, Delamare, and Moussu, which have an interesting 

 bearing on some of Brown-Sequard's results. After the operation 

 of laparotomy on a pregnant rabbit or guinea-pig, the kidney or the 

 liver became diseased, and the offspring showed similar affections. 

 The experimenters suggested that some substance set free from the 

 diseased kidney of the mother affected the kidney of the young in 

 the uterus. " May not, therefore, Brown-Sequard's results be also 

 explained as due to direct transmission from the organs of the parent 

 to the similar organs of the young in the uterus ? " But this would 

 not be inheritance in the strict sense. It should be noted, however, 

 that what has been just said does not of course apply to those cases 

 in which Brown-Sequard experimented on the male parent. Charrin 

 maintains on experimental grounds that " cytotoxins " may pass 

 not only from the mother to the foetus, but from either parent to 

 its germ-cells — ova or spermatozoa (see Revue generale des Sciences, 



* Dupuy, while confirming Brown-Sequard, laid emphasis on the altera- 

 tions of nutrition after the experiments. 



f Sommer notes a diminution of fertility after the experiments. 



