238 ON VARIABILITY AND ADAPTATION 



the passage of a given impulse, if repeated, would seem to oppose 

 so strong an obstruction to the passage of impulses along a 

 particular path, that soon a maximal stimulus may produce no 

 result. Here there is no anatomical change : it is a matter of 

 habit. Put the patient under an anaesthetic and remove the 

 inhibiting mechanism, and now stimulus is followed by the normal 

 reflex muscular act. The worst of it is that, too often, the patient 

 is in absolute ignorance of the fact that he or she is exerting 

 this inhibition. I recall vividly a very delightful old lady, a 

 woman of great personal charm, and, if I may so express it, 

 eminently virtuous, who had been in a terrible railway accident 

 on the north coast of Wales in which many people were killed, 

 who received so strong a nervous shock as to be incapable of 

 using her lower limbs, and to be bedridden for twenty years. I 

 have said that she was virtuous ; that is to say, that within a 

 year after the accident she was awarded by the courts one 

 hundred thousand dollars (£20,000), and she did not, as is pain- 

 fully often the case — and that in a way that, perhaps at times 

 mistakenly, makes us contemn poor humanity — recover her 

 powers so soon as the court had awarded her this compensation. 

 No, she remained bedridden twenty years, and then for the 

 first time in her reign Queen Victoria was about to visit a near-by 

 city. The old lady had never seen the Queen, who was just of 

 the same age, so the occasion appealed to her very peculiarly. 

 She longed to see her, and that with a great longing ; and, sure 

 enough, the afternoon before the great event she got out of 

 bed and walked, went to the celebration next day, and after 

 that walked until she died. 



I do not say that she walked vigorously, but if a long spell 

 of arrested function had some effects, certainly nerve tracts had 

 not been destroyed, or otherwise her paralysis was not due to 

 anatomical changes in the nerve cord. It was an inhibitory 

 habit. But, as I say, I do not want to go into these nervous 

 conditions ; these we all accept. The instances of automatic 

 cellular activity are of more immediate interest, and once I 

 mention one or two of these to you, I doubt not that you who 

 are in practice will call to mind individual cases of your own 

 which are best explained along this line. Thus my colleague, 

 Dr. Meakins, has quoted to me more than one case in which a 

 small dose of mercury has induced abundant salivation. We 



