314 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SEXUAL REPEODUCTION 



ducted in a centripetal direction from the nerve to some centre 

 which is apparently situated in the pons and medulla oblongata, 

 although, according- to others l , it is placed in the cortex of the 

 cerebrum. Nothnagel 2 considers that certain changes, the nature 

 of which is still entirely unknown, but which may be histological 

 or perhaps solely molecular in character, must be produced, leading 

 to an increased irritability of the grey matter of the centres con- 

 cerned. 



Nothnagel thinks it possible or even probable that in those 

 cases in which the division of nerves is followed by epilepsy, a 

 neuritis ascendens an inflammation passing along the nerves in a 

 central direction is the cause of the changes suggested by him 

 in the epileptic centre. All our knowledge of bacteria and of the 

 pathological processes induced by them, seems to indicate that such 

 a neuritis ascendens, as is assumed by Nothnagel, would render 

 important support to the hypothesis that the artificial epilepsy is 

 due to infection. But when we further consider that the offspring 

 of artificially epileptic animals may themselves become epileptic, 

 although in most cases they suffer from a variety of other nervous 

 diseases (in consequence of trophic paralysis), I hardly see how the 

 facts can be rendered intelligible except by supposing that in these 

 cases of what I may call traumatic epilepsy, we are dealing with 

 an infectious disease caused by microbes which find their nutritive 

 medium in the nervous tissues, and which bring about the trans- 

 mission of the disease to the offspring by penetrating the ovum or 

 the spermatozoon. 



Obersteiner found that the offspring were more frequently dis- 

 eased when the mother was epileptic, rather than the father. This 

 is readily intelligible when we remember that the ovum contains 

 an immensely larger amount of substance than the spermatozoon, 

 and can therefore be more frequently infected by microbes and can 

 contain a greater number of them. 



Of course, I do not mean to assert that epilepsy always depends 

 upon infection, or upon the presence of microbes in the nervous 

 tissues. Westphal produced epilepsy in guinea-pigs by striking 



1 Compare Unvericht, ' E^perimentelle und klinische Untersuchungen uber die 

 Epilepsie.' Berlin, 1883. With regard to the question of hereditary transmission, 

 the part of the brain in which the epileptic centre is placed is of no importance. 



a Compare Ziemssen'a ' Handbuch der spec. Pathologie und Therapie.' Bd. XII. 

 2. Halfte; Artikel ' Epilepsie und Eklampsie.' Leipzig, 1877. 



