42 Dr. W. Philip on the 



prise himself. What he, with great justice, calls " rather a 

 strained hypothesis" (p. 278), namely, that the fluid secreted in 

 the stomach after the division of the eighth pair of nerves in the 

 neck, is the effect of the nervous influence which remains in the 

 lower portion of the divided nerves, and which he ascribes to me, 

 is wholly his own, and altogether incompatible with the facts I 

 adduce. I may add, with respect to what he says of my opinion 

 of the action of sedatives, that he will find it observed in the 

 82d. page of my Treatise, that " we always, for we frequently 

 repeated the experiment, saw an evident increase in the action 

 of the heart when we washed off the tobacco." 



Dr. Alison, in his former paper, stated, that my inference re- 

 specting secretion depending on the nervous power, is in all 

 respects similar to M. le Gallois' inference, respecting the de- 

 pendence of the heart on that power ; and now that I have re- 

 minded him that there is this difference between the two cases, 

 that the heart retains all its power after it is separated from the 

 brain and spinal marrow, while the secreting organs wholly lose 

 theirs, he replies, that although the heart had been incapable 

 of its function when in any way deprived of the influence of 

 the brain and spinal marrow, he would still have considered M. 

 le Gallois' opinion as erroneous ; because we might still have 

 ascribed its loss of function to the means used for separating it 

 from those organs. On the same principle we cannot be sure 

 that the feeling of a limb depends on its connexion with the 

 brain, because when we divide its nerves or in any other way 

 intercept its communication with the brain, we are not sure that 

 the loss of sensation may not arise from the injury done to the 

 limb by the means we use for this purpose. 



Dr. Alison forgets, that, of possible opinions respecting the 

 cause of any phenomena, some of which must be true, that 

 which is most consistent with the other phenomena relating to 

 the subject, must necessarily be admitted. The reply in the 

 case of sensation is ; we see the sensation of every part influ- 

 enced by the state of the brain ; if we excite this organ, sensa- 

 tion is every where acute ; if we oppress it, sensation is every 

 where benumbed ; and when we find it impossible to intercept 



