ix MID- AND INTEE-BEAIN 509 



given in one of his earliest communications to the Medical Society 

 of Berlin in 1911. He exhibited a dog operated on at two 

 sittings, two years and three months previously, the two cerebral 

 hemispheres being completely removed with the exception of 

 certain parts of the base, which had to be spared in order not to 

 damage the chiasma and optic tract. 



After becoming emaciated, it recovered its initial weight of 12 

 kgrms. It began to walk after two days ; in a couple of weeks it 

 could feed itself. Its mode of barking and eating was perfectly 

 normal. After a few months it was capable of walking and 

 running. When teased by pinching it tried to bite ; but quieted 

 down when its head was stroked. The sense of position was not 

 completely lost in the limbs, but when set on a table with one leg 

 hanging down, it did not attempt to bring it back into a normal 

 position. Although it appeared to be blind it had regained the 

 winking reflex by the end of the second week, and when a sound 

 was made, it turned its head back and pricked up its ears. 

 Mental activity was not entirely absent ; Eothmann saw the proof 

 of this in the fact that the dog learned to adapt its movements to 

 the oblong form of its cage. He concluded that the lower centres 

 are capable, by daily practice and education, of co-ordinated 

 movements directed to an end, and of assuming eventually part of 

 the activities which normally belong to the fore-brain. 



Eothmann has not yet published his complete work, giving the 

 post-mortem description of the brain and a detailed account of the 

 symptoms, which are indispensable in making a comparative study 

 between this animal and Goltz' dog. 



Goltz' observations show that the most important phenomena 

 of deficiency observed after the destruction of the brain are the 

 loss of all the manifestations or expressions from which we draw 

 conclusions as to the memory, reflection, and intelligence of the 

 animal. All the sensory and motor functions essential to life, 

 save those of seeking food, may be executed, even if imperfectly, 

 by the surviving centres. The dog without a fore-brain is capable 

 of feeding itself when the food is presented to it ; of moving with 

 tolerable regularity, under the guidance of muscular and cutaneous 

 sensations; possibly also of sight and hearing when the thalam- 

 encephalon and mid-brain are intact; and of passing alternately 

 from the waking to the sleeping state like the normal dog. The 

 prosencephalon is not necessary in any absolute sense for all these 

 functions, most probably because their highest representation 

 is in other parts particularly in the thalamencephaloii and 

 mesencephalon. 



Flechsig holds everything Goltz observed in the dog to be 

 partially true of man also. He saw a new-born infant, in whom 

 only the basal parts of the brain, including the posterior corpora 

 quadrigemina, existed, while the hemispheres, thalami, and anterior 



