490 THE POSTERIOR PITUITARY AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



the heart-muscle. Very marked is the contrast, indeed, be- 

 tween this animal and one still endowed with the tissues of 

 the base of the brain. "Pigeons, for instance, have been kept 

 alive for five or six weeks," says the same author, "after com- 

 plete removal of the cerebral hemisphere with the exception 

 of portions of the crura and corpora striata immediately sur- 

 rounding the optic thalami." . . . "In warm-blooded ani- 

 mals, as in the more lowly cold-blooded frog, the parts of the 

 brain below or behind the cerebral hemispheres constitute a 

 nervous machinery by which all the bodily movements are car- 

 ried out/' 3 



That this mechanism is located below the hemispheres in 

 man has also been illustrated by many cases reported, among 

 which may be cited the famous crow-bar case, in which, "by 

 a premature explosion of gunpowder, an iron bar three and 

 a half feet long, one and a quarter inches in diameter, and 

 weighing thirteen and a quarter pounds, was shot completely 

 through a man's head, and perforated his brain. This man 

 walked up a flight of stairs after the accident, and gave his 

 account of how it happened. Although his life was naturally 

 despaired of for some time, he developed no paralysis; nor did 

 marked impairment of his intellectual faculties follow conva- 

 lescence. Eventually he recovered his health. Twelve years 

 elapsed before his death, during which time he was a laborer 

 on a farm." 4 It is thus evident that, in the entire animal scale, 

 the hemispheres are functionally dependent upon some comple- 

 mental function located in the base of the brain in the region 

 through which the Weber brothers passed their heart-inhibiting cur- 

 rent: i.e., the central gray matter lining the neural canal. 



A remark which in this connection is of particular inter- 

 est to us is that of Professor Duval, when, referring to the 

 meaning of bulbar functions, according to modern conceptions, 

 he says: "For the physiologist, the medulla extends above the 

 limits of the vertebral column into the cranium and about up 

 to the sella turcica." We would say into the sella turcica, for 

 it seems clear to us that the posterior pituitary lobe presents 

 the functional characteristic that would fulfill the requirements of 



The italics are our own. 



* A. B. Ranney: "Lectures on Nervous Diseases." 



