100 Dr. A. p. W. Philip on the 



go to the heart and the spinal marrow in the neck, or even by 

 decapitation, the motions of the heart continue as before. 2. If 

 we cut out the heart of a living animal it continues to beat, 

 and sometimes for a long time. 3. We always produce con- 

 vulsions even for some time after death in the muscles of 

 voluntary motion by irritating their nerves, either mechani- 

 cally, or in any other way. On the contrary, the irritation of 

 the cardiac nerves occasions no change in the motions of the 

 heart, nor recalls them when they have ceased. The same 

 observation is true of the medulla oblongata and spinal marrow, 

 the irritation of which occasions strong general convulsions, 

 but produces no effect upon the heart. 



These facts are correct, except, perhaps, those of the third 

 head. In admitting them, the adversaries of irritability have 

 asked, why, if the nervous power have no action on the 

 heart is this organ supplied with nerves ? and why is it so 

 evidently subjected to the influence of the passions ? Haller 

 never gave any satisfactory explanation of these objections, but 

 every thing proves that he felt all their force. When we read 

 with attention all that he has said of the motions of the heart, 

 in his Dissertations on Irritability*, and, above all, in his great 

 work on Physiology t, we are struck with the contradictions 

 which we meet with in them, and which makes the perusal of 

 them fatiguing. 



Through all of them his great object is to prove, that the mo- 

 tions of the heart are independent of the nervous system, yet 

 he seems to admit, in several places, that the nerves possess 

 an influence over the heart %• These contradictions, with 

 which several justly-celebrated writers have reproached him, 

 amongst others, M. M. Prochaska§, Behrends {|, Ernest Plai- 

 ner II, &c., proceed evidently from his not being able to recon- 



* Memoires sur la Nature Sensible et Irritable des Parties, &c. Lau- 

 sanne, 1756. Opera Minora, torn. i. 



f^Elefruent, Physiol., lib. iv. sect. 5, et lib. xi. sect. 3. 



X Ibid. lib. 4. sect. 5, p. 493, et passim. 



§ Opera Minora^ Viennoe, 1800, torn. II., p. 90. 



)| Vol. III.; p. 4, of the Collection of Ludwig, entitled Scriptoren Neii- 

 rolog. Minores Selecti, Lipsiae, 1791-5, four vols. 4 to. 



^ Ibid., vol. II., p. 266. 



