SEAT OF VOLITION. 385 



sent to record them. Similar opportunities have likewise occurred 

 under the operations of the guillotine. 



M. Legallois, 1 in some experiments, which he instituted, for the pur- 

 pose of determining the nervous influence on the heart, &c., found that 

 rabbits, which he had deprived of their heads and hinder extremities, 

 but still kept alive by artificial respiration, moved their fore paws when- 

 ever he stimulated them by plucking their hairs. 



With regard to complete acephali, or those foetuses which are totally 

 devoid of encephalon, although they may vegetate in utero, they ex- 

 pire after birth, owing to their being devoid of the medulla oblongata in 

 which is the nervous system of respiration. Monsters have been born 

 without the brain, but with part of the encephalon. These have been 

 called, by way of distinction, anencepliali or hemicephali. Where the 

 medulla oblongata exists, they possess the nervous system of the senses, 

 and of respiration, and are, consequently, able to live for a time after 

 birth, and to exert certain muscular movements, as sucking, moving the 

 limbs, evacuating the excretions, &c. M. Adelon asserts, that none of 

 these facts ought to shake the proposition, that in the superior animals, 

 and consequently in man, the medulla spinalis and nerves are merely 

 the conductors of volition or the locomotive will; and that volition is 

 produced in the encephalon alone. His arguments on this point are 

 not, however, characterized by that ingenuousness and freedom from 

 sophism, for which his physiological disquisitions are generally distin- 

 guished. "First of all," he observes, "the fact of the progression and 

 motions of men and quadrupeds after decapitation is manifestly apo- 

 cryphal; and even if we admit, that certain animals still execute certain 

 movements after decapitation, are such evidently regular and ordained ? 

 And, supposing them to be so, may not this have arisen from the con- 

 formation of the parts, or from habits contracted by the organs? This 

 last appears to us most probable ; for if, from any cause whatever, the 

 muscles of a part contract, they cause the part to execute such motions 

 as the joints, entering into its composition, require; and which may, 

 therefore, be similar to those produced by the will." He further at- 

 tempts to deny the facts related of the lower classes of animals, and 

 asserts, that "they are not evinced in the experiments instituted in our 

 day." The cases, recorded to prove the defective sensibility of the lower 

 tribes of animated nature, are, however, as has been elsewhere shown, 

 incontestable. The trunk of the wasp attempts to sting after the head 

 has been removed; and an experiment made on the rattlesnake by Dr. 

 Harlan, 2 in the presence of Capt. Basil Hall, certainly demonstrates 

 something like design in the headless trunk ; and the cases, already re- 

 ferred to, on the authority of Drs. Le Conte and Dowler, exhibit almost 

 miraculous phenomena of the kind in the decapitated alligator. 3 



Our conclusion ought probably to be, from all these cases, that 

 volition is chiefly seated in the encephalon, but that an obscure action 

 of the kind may originate, perhaps, farther down the cerebro-spinal 



1 GEuvres, Paris, 1824. 2 Medical and Physical Researches, Philad., 1835. 



3 See p. 307. 



VOL. i. 25 



