32 MEMOIR OP BARON HALLER. 



quadrupeds, if the lungs were not contiguous with 

 the pleura." 



But the views of Haller, which were the most 

 original, and led to the keenest controversy at the 

 time, and the greatest admiration afterwards, were 

 those which he propounded on the subject of irrita- 

 bility. The numerous family of polypi presented to 

 him the appearance of a high degree of irritability, 

 without any ascertained brain or nerves. Worms 

 also, often in the highest degree contractile, having 

 very minute nerves, appeared by their structure to 

 lead to a somewhat similar inference. He moreover 

 remarked, that those parts of the frame which move 

 the most frequently and powerfully, such as the 

 heart, are very moderately sensible, and do not re- 

 ceive a large proportionate supply of nerves : and 

 very numerous experiments taught him that con- 

 tractions, whether natural or excited by artificial 

 stimuli, and sensibility, are very unequally distri- 

 buted, and their proportions are very different in 

 organized bodies. The following are the terms in 

 which, at an after period, he gave a somewhat chro- 

 nological account of his discovery, for such he clearly 

 considered it.* " In my Commentaries upon Boer- 

 haave's Institutions, published in 1739, I have ex- 

 pressed myself as follows : Wherefore tfie heart is 

 moved by some unknown cause, which depends neither 

 upon the brain nor the arteries, but lies concealed in 



* Vis ab omni al& hactenus cognita proprietate corporuin 

 diversa et nova est : neque enim a pondere, neque ab attrao- 

 tionc, neque ab elatere pendet. Prim. Lin. Physiol, 408. 



