IN MEDICAL SCIENCE. 45 



less remarkable than these results are the facts, which 

 I with others of my audience have had the opportunity 

 of observing, as shown by M. Brown-S^quard, of the 

 artificial production of epilepsy in animals by injuring 

 the spinal cord, and the induction of the paroxysm by 

 pinching a certain portion of the skin. I would also 

 call the student's attention to his account of the rela- 

 tions of the nervous centres to nutrition and secre- 

 tion, the last of which relations has been made the 

 subject of an extended essay by our fellow-country- 

 man. Dr. H. F. Campbell, of Georgia. 



The physiology of the spinal cord seems a simple 

 matter as you study it in Longet. The experiments 

 of Brown-S^quard have shown the problem to be 

 a complex one, and raised almost as many doubts as 

 they have solved questions ; at any rate, I believe all 

 lecturers on physiology agree that there is no part of 

 their task they dread so much as the analysis of the evi- 

 dence relating to the special offices of the different por- 

 tions of the medulla spinalis. In the brain we are sure 

 that we do not know how to localize functions ; in the 

 spinal cord, we think we do know something ; but there 

 are so many anomalies, and seeming contradictions, and 

 sources of fallacy, that, beyond the facts of crossed pa- 

 ralysis of sensation, and the conducting agency of the 

 gray substance, I am afraid we retain no cardinal 

 principles discovered since the development of the 

 reflex function took its place by Sir Charles Bell's great 

 discovery. 



