NEUROLOGISTS AND NEUROLOGICAL LABORA- 

 TORIES. — No. I. Professor Gust.w Fritsch. 

 With Portrait. 



Nothing is better calculated to impress the American stu- 

 dent with the wonderful progress which the science of neurology 

 has made during the last twenty years than a visit to European 

 laboratories where he will find the patriarchs of the science still 

 in the thick of the conflict. 



A little more than twenty years ago, when phrenology still 

 occupied the field of brain localization and it required some 

 courage to seriously argue a close connection between nervous 

 excitement and mental phenomena, two comparatively young 

 men began a series of experiments which are worthy to be de- 

 scribed by the much abused term " epoch-making." One of 

 the adventurers in an untried field was primarily a physiologist, 

 the other, whose journal of an extended African journey had 

 already made his name familiar, was especially interested in 

 anatomy. 



As a result of these studies there appeared in 1870, in 

 Reichert and Du Bois-Reyraond's A.rchiv. , a paper entitled 

 " LTeber die elecktrische erregbarkeit des Grosshirns,"' in which 

 it was for the first time demonstrated that electrical stimulation 

 of definite areas of the front part of the cerebral cortex pro- 

 duces definite complex muscular contractions strictly limited 

 to these areas. Such contractions appear in the muscles of the 

 opposite side from that of the irritated hemisphere. Not less 

 important was the discovery that other regions, to all appearance 

 exactly similar, evoke no sort of muscular response under elec- 

 trical stimulation. 



L' p to this lime the science had remained under the ban of 

 Florens' generalizations which, in spite of their great value, served 

 to close the subject against farther experimental investigation. 



Florens regarded the hemispheres as the seat of will and 

 perception, but could find no evidence of division of labor. In 

 whatever way he progressively removed the brain he was able to 

 detect only a gradual sinking of the sum of the activities. 



