64 Physiology of the Brain. |January, 
ments have become the scandal of the Academicians, who, 
seduced by the attraction of ingenious operations, have 
applauded with as much enthusiasm as fickleness the pre- 
tended glorious discoveries of their candidates. 
‘In order that experiments of this kind should be able to 
throw light on the functions of each of the cerebral parts, it 
would require a concurrence of many conditions impossible 
to be fulfilled. It would first require that we should be 
enabled to restrain all the effects of the lesion to that 
portion only on which the experiment is performed ; for if 
excitement, haemorrhage, inflammation, &c., affect other 
parts, what can we conclude? and how can we _ prevent 
these inconveniences in mutilations either artificial or 
accidental? It would be necessary that we should be able 
to make an animal whose brain has been wounded and 
mutilated—who is filled with fear and suffering, disposed to 
manifest the instin¢ts, propensities, and faculties, the organs 
of which could not have been injured or destroyed. But 
captivity alone is sufficient to stifle the instincts of most 
animals.” ; 
Have the results attained by the recent experiments of 
Fritsch, Hitzig, and Ferrier a tendency to invalidate these 
opinions of Gall, or do they not rather confirm their correct- 
ness? I presume it will hardly be pretended that the 
function of a single portion of the brain has yet been 
discovered by these means,* and I venture to think there is 
but little probability of their effeCting such a discovery in 
the future, notwithstanding the exaggerated expectations 
held out. At present it is palpable that physiologists are 
quite adrift as to the real signification of the phenomena 
elicited, the true interpretation of which must be sought in 
the discoveries of Gall, who maintained the competency of 
the surface of the brain to originate muscular movements in 
opposition to the current doctrines of physiology and the 
asserted proof to the contrary afforded by the experiments 
of Flourens, and other mutilators, and whose familiarity 
with the faét is recorded in the extract from his letter 
to Baron Retzer, in 1798, prefixed to this article. 
The explanation of the phenomena obtained by the appli- 
cation of stimuli to the surface of the brain, is found in the 
fact that those innate faculties which require the aid of the 
* A fa& conclusive on this point, and which places in a striking light the 
vagueness and want of precision of the results obtained, is the circumstance 
that that eminent compiler, Dr. Carpenter, sees in these experiments ‘‘ a remark- 
able confirmation” of his transcendently absurd and ridiculous notion,that the 
intellectual organs are seated in the back of the head. 
