LIVING HEAD AND DEAD BODY. 67 D 



the lower end of the spinal cord were touched. Even when the 

 experiment was carried farther, and the whole of the cervical 

 with part of the dorsal spinal cord was destroyed, evidences of 

 life could be observed in the posterior two-thirds of the thorax. 

 These experiments demonstrated beyond doubt that, if the lungs 

 and heart could perform their functions with any other fragment 

 of the body as they do with the thorax, it might be kept alive. 

 As Legal! ois himself says, " if the place of the heart could be 

 supplied by a sort of injection, and if at the same time a supply 

 of arterial blood, either natural or artificial, if such a formation 

 of blood were possible, could be obtained, life might be main- 

 tained indefinitely in any fragment of the body whatever ; and 

 conseq^uently a severed head might be kept alive and in pos- 

 session of all the faculties pertaining to the brain. Not only 

 could life be maintained in this manner, either in the head or 

 in any other isolated part of an animal's body, but it might be 

 recalled after its entire extinction ; it might even be recalled to 

 the wdiole body, and a veritable resurrection, in every sense of 

 the word, might be effected." Perhaps it may seem that the 

 success of his experiments rendered Legallois too sanguine ; but 

 his anticipations have already in great part been fulfilled, and a 

 severed head has been partially at least restored to life by 

 M. Brown-Sequard. His experiment, as related by M. Yulpian,* 

 consisted in cutting off the head of a dog immediately after it 

 had been killed, and connecting the carotid and vertebral 

 arteries with an apparatus for artificial circulation. After eight 

 or ten minutes had elapsed, and all signs of excitability in the 

 medulla oblongata and the rest of the encephalon had been gone 

 for several minutes, defibrinated and arterialised blood was 

 injected simultaneously into the vertebrals and carotids. In a 

 few seconds, signs of life began to appear, and the muscles of 

 the eyes, in fine, acted in such a way as seemed to prove that 

 the cerebral functions were re-established. 



Hardly less astonishing than Brown- Sequard's experiments 

 are those of Preyer,t who has succeeded in restoring their vital 

 properties to a frog's muscles after they have been brought into 



* Revue de Cours Scieniijtques, 1864-65, tome 2, p. 217. 

 t CentralUatt fiir die Med. Wissenschaft., 1864, p. 769. 



