i88 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



speedily reduces, to rudimentary dimensions and to an 

 inoperative state, all organs whose activity becomes 

 lessened or abolished. From the discussion of such 

 human muscles and their past and gone functions 

 occasionally surviving faintly as we have seen in scalp 

 and ear our talk led on to an explanation of more 

 curious acts of man's life, in which a command over 

 organs usually self-acting is sometimes illustrated. 



For instance, I cited the occasional occurrence, in 

 humanity, of the power of returning the contents of the 

 stomach to the mouth, painlessly and at will, as an 

 instance of such command. Here we see in man the 

 establishment of a power which is entirely absent, as 

 a rule, and which seems to represent part of the act 

 of "rumination" or "chewing the cud" in lower 

 animals. What occurs in such cases is simply the 

 development of command over the stomach and gullet 

 muscles. The one essential condition for such an 

 abnormal feature of life, is the alteration of the nervous 

 supply of the parts concerned. That is to say, parts 

 usually governed by the involuntary nervous system, 

 come to be placed under the government of the volun- 

 tary nerves. 



Now, a far more extraordinary instance of such 

 command over parts of our bodies which usually work 

 perfectly and harmoniously, apart from all intelligent 

 guidance, was afforded by the case of Colonel Town- 

 shend. Some years ago I took the trouble to hunt up 

 this case as given in its original form, and as contained 

 in a queer old volume entitled " The English Malady : 

 or a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds, as 

 Spleen, Vapours, Lowness of Spirits, Hypochondriacal 

 and Hysterical Distemper, &c. London : 1733." The 

 author of this volume was one Dr. George Cheyne. 



