iv INHERITABLE ARTIFICIAL EPILEPSY 183 



made epileptic in this way), then the possibility of infection 

 is excluded. The only question is whether in this experiment 

 the animal was not already pregnant when the experiment 

 was made. If it was, then the evidence is not conclusive. 

 Apart from this, it is evident at first sight that there is more 

 justification for Ziegler's objection than for the other. But 

 why should all the guinea-pigs operated upon in Berlin, 

 Vienna, and Paris have been decrepit, and why should 

 guinea-pigs be generally decrepit? The fact that they are 

 domesticated is no evidence for this assumption, for they are 

 all domesticated, they exist only in captivity, their wild 

 ancestors are not even known ; for thousands of years they 

 have been reared only under man's protection, for they were 

 kept by the ancient Peruvians and Chilians, and they seem 

 to thrive very well under this protection, as is proved especi- 

 ally by their almost incredibly rapid multiplication. Still 

 Ziegler may be justified in demanding that the experiments 

 should be repeated. 



With regard to the other experiments of Brown- Se"quard 

 and Deutschmann 1 concerning acquired and inherited affec- 

 tions of the eye, Ziegler holds that these are to be explained 

 as cases of infection and inflammation, and that therefore 

 they afford no evidence of inheritance. 



Some of Brown-Se'quard's experiments, nevertheless, as the 

 inheritance of an atrophy of the foot in the guinea-pig after 

 section of a nerve, seem to me to afford unassailable evidence, 

 unless indeed any one would assume that here too the cause 

 lay in an infection conveyed to the germ. But with such 

 purely arbitrary assumptions anything could be proved. 



I repeat that a single certain case of the inheritance of 

 acquired characters upsets the whole theory of inheritance 

 being exclusively limited to the germinal cells ; and it seems 



1 Deutschmann, Ueber Vererbung von erworbenen Augen affektionen bet 

 Kaninchen (Zehender's Klin. MonatsblMter, 1880). 



