THE #££?##£ SYSTEM, 135 



21$. After t&e num©*ws experiments* »J^ by 

 Haller and other yery careful observers, aye ar,e cerr 

 tain, from minute anatomical examination, that many 

 of the similar parts do not .exhibit any true vestige of 

 JWWes ; and from ##ggM#J observation f and dissections 

 tf Hying ^animals,^: t^at they do not evince the leasjt 

 sign it feeling. 



* Haller on the sensible parts of the body, Comment. Sfgc. $c. Gottiug. T. i. 

 aad hip discourse upon them, Nov. Comment. Gutting. T. iii. 



1'ctcr Castell, E.yperim. qttibus c.onstitit varias h. c. partes sentiendi facilitate 

 carere. Gotting. 1 753. 4to. And three entire collections on the controversies 

 ■excited by the Gottingen publications throughout Europe. 



Suir ijixcnsibilita I irritubilita , dis%ertazioni transportate da J. G. V. PeUpnl. 

 &om. 175."). 4to. 



Siil/a insensitivita ed irriUibilita Hallcriana opuscoli raccolli da G. B. Fabri. 

 Bologna. 1757 — 59. IV vol. 4to. And that which Haller himself published 

 nnder the title of Mimnires sur la nature sensible et irritable des parties du corps 

 humain. Lausanne. 1756—59. IV vol. 12mo. 



f Amidst the great variety and even contradiction of opinion, which, as we shall 

 presently mention, exists with respect to the feeling of tendons and other parts 

 when injured, I have always considered negative arguments of more weight 

 than positive, because nothing is more fallacious than the ideas of patients as to 

 the seat of internal pa.ifis. To say nothing of cases where amputated parts 

 appear to tlu: patient as still in possession of feeling, it is well known that some 

 have felt a fixed pain for a great length of time in parts where after death 

 nothing uncommon was observable ; and that, t^n the other hand, in chronic 

 diseases, pain is sometimes felt not in the diseased part, hut in another which is 

 healthy and perhaps very remote. 



We may in this way much more easily .expUin syphilitic pains, for instance, 

 referred to the bones, than the result of so many contradictory experiments, in 

 which I have seen the medulla of the human subject roughly handled without 

 causing the least uneasiness. 



J I am every day more convinced that much caution, and practice, and re- 

 petition of the same experiment in many different kinds of animals, are neces- 

 sary in cstaldishing the laws of physiology from dissections of living animals. 

 To adduce the example of the supposed feeling of the medulla, I have found 

 different results in many mammalia and birds. Many allowed the medulla to 

 be destroyed without evincing any symptom of pain; others were convulsed, 



