182 ACQUIRED CHARACTERS sec. 



anecdotes of no value as evidence. They attempt to deprive 

 the experiments of Brown -Sequard, confirmed by others 

 (Westphal and Obersteiner), on the inheritance of artificial 

 epilepsy in guinea-pigs, of importance, by explaining^ "that 

 this transmission of acquired epilepsy to the following genera- 

 tion, the occurrence of which is not to be denied, depends 

 not on heredity, but on inoculation of the germ, on the trans- 

 ference of living disease-producing organisms." 



Since, however, this hereditary epilepsy was produced l)y 

 partial or complete section of the spinal cord, or by division 

 of the nervus iscliiadicus, when epileptic attacks could only 

 be produced some weeks after the operation by pinching the 

 skin on the lateral parts of the head and neck (epileptogenous 

 zone) ; since Westphal, who expressly states that he entered 

 upon these experiments with distrust, was able to produce 

 inheritable epilepsy by blows with a hammer on the head of 

 the animals — that assumption seems to be entirely unfounded. 

 But Ziegler, although he will not contest the possibility that 

 a transmissible disease due to infection may have followed 

 the operation, prefers to try to diminish the force and im- 

 portance of the experiments of Brown -Sequard, Westphal, 

 and Obersteiner, by asking if the guinea-pigs on which the 

 operations were made may not have been already predisposed 

 to disease ; if the appearance of epilepsy may not have been 

 due to general decrepitude, rather than to the inheritance of 

 a disease experimentally produced.^ 



If epilepsy can actually be produced by blows upon the 

 head, and then inherited, as Westphal states (it showed itself, 

 according to that author, in the tw^o young ones of a guinea-pig 



1 Wei.smann, Biolog. Centralblatt, 15th Marcli 1886 ; Westphal, Berlin. 

 Klin. Wochenschrift, 1871 ; Obersteiner, Med. Jahrbucher, 1875. 



^ E. Ziegler: Konnen ericorbene pathologische Eigenschaften vererbt tcerden, 

 und loie entstehen erbliche Krankheiten und Missbildungen ? Jena, G. Fischer, 

 1886. Published separately, from the Beitrdgen zicr pathol. Anatomie u. Physio- 

 logie of Ziegler and Nauwerck, Bd. i. 



