Essays on Life 



of that nerve and also of the crural. Some- 

 times, instead of complete absence of the toes, 

 only a part of one or two or three was 

 missing in the young, although in the parent 

 not only the toes but the whole foot was 

 absent (partly eaten off, partly destroyed by 

 inflammation, ulceration, or gangrene). 



" ' 8th. Appearance of various morbid states 

 of the skin and hair of the neck and face in 

 animals born of parents having had similar 

 alterations in the same parts, as effects of an 

 injury to the sciatic nerve.' 



" It should be especially observed that 

 Brown-Sequard has bred during thirty years 

 many thousand guinea-pigs from animals 

 which had not been operated upon, and not 

 one of these manifested the epileptic tendency. 

 Nor has he ever seen a guinea-pig born with- 

 out toes, which was not the offspring of 

 parents which had gnawed off their own toes 

 owing to the sciatic nerve having been divided. 

 Of this latter fact thirteen instances were 

 carefully recorded, and a greater number were 

 seen ; yet Brown-Sequard speaks of such cases 



as one of the rarer forms of inheritance. It is 



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