570 



NATURE 



[October 15, 1903 



due attention from the officers of that survey. It is 

 well known that important explorations have been 

 carried on in other portions of the vast territories 

 now under the rule of the Khedive, and it may be 

 hoped, in the interests of science, that these results 

 may be published with less delay than those we have 

 now been noticing. !• W. J. 



EXPERIMENTS ON HUMAN MONSTERS. 

 Essai sur la Psycho-physiologie des Monstres 

 Humain^. By N. Vaschide and CI. Vurpas. Pp. 

 294. (Paris: F. R. de Rudeval, n.d.) Price 5 

 francs. 



THE substance of two-thirds of this book has 

 already appeared in various scientific and medical 

 journals. The last ninety-four pages are devoted to 

 the researches of other workers m the same field. The 

 first of the two monsters examined by the authors was 

 an anencephalous male child, which was continuously 

 under observation during the thirty-nine hours of its 

 extra-uterine life. An examination post mortem re- 

 vealed the complete, absence of cerebral hemispheres, 

 cerebellum, pons, restiform body, inferior and 

 accessory olives, and pyramidal tract. The monster's 

 apparent lack of taste and smell is devoid of theoretical 

 interest, as the authors omit to mention whether the 

 trigeminal and olfactory nerves were developed. 

 Certainly they failed to find traces of the third and 

 fourth cranial nerves, coincident with the lack of which 

 the infant presented exophthalmos, external squint, 

 •dilatation of the pupil, absence of the pupil-reflex, and 

 ptosis. The cerebral hemispheres were replaced by a 

 protruding cystic tumour; throughout the brain and 

 cord the ependyma, neuroglia and ventricles were 

 much hyper trophied, and atrophied degenerated nerve- 

 cells were met with, especially in the cranial region, 

 together with much vascular engorgement and dia- 

 pedesis. In order to explain the yet healthy state of 

 the retinae and optic nerves, the authors conclude that 

 the cerebral hemispheres at first developed normally, 

 and were only later affected by " an inflammatory 

 process of an infectious nature," which produced the 

 anencephaly and other abnormalities. But the 

 authors' interpretation of their histological investi- 

 gations is far from convincing. It is hardly a matter 

 for surprise to find haemorrhages and wandering 

 leucocytes in the profoundly disturbed nervous system 

 of a cold, moribund, cyanotic creature that breathed 

 only about eight times a minute, and then with a well- 

 marked Cheyne-Stokes rhythm. Moreover, some 

 secondary degeneration may have followed from the 

 •complete absence of the pyramidal tract. The authors 

 allude to an insufficiency of myelinisation and to the 

 abnormal proportions between white and grey matter. 

 But these statements, and the rather indifferent plates 

 and illustrations upon which they are founded, would 

 have carried greater conviction, were it certain that 

 the authors (of whom one is an experimental psycho- 

 logist and the other a hospital resident physician) are 

 perfectly familiar with the corresponding appearances 

 in a healthy newly-born babe. 

 NO. 1772, VOL. 68] 



On pp. 47 and 48 we read : — 



" It seems that a class of psychic phenomena, which 

 hitherto have been attributed exclusively to the cerebral 

 hemispheres, such as the special sensibility to touch, 

 pain, and warmth . . . existed in our anencephalous 

 subject independently of the action of the brain." 



In point of fact, the reflex movements experimentally 

 obtained by tactual, painful, and thermal stimuli, like- 

 wise the abortive attempts of the subject to swallow, 

 its cries and convulsive seizures, one and all are just 

 what might have been expected from a " decerebrate " 

 vertebrate; they are quite void of "psychic" signifi- 

 cance in the ordinary meaning of the term, and throw 

 no fresh light on the subject whatever. Surely the 

 presence of these reflex actions, and the integrity of 

 the nerve-trunks, might have led the authors to suspect 

 that nerve-cell degeneration had been neither as 

 extensive nor as intense as they had imagined. But, 

 on the contrary, they incline (p. 76) " to the opinion 

 of certain authors who see in the cell a centre having 

 a function purely trophic and in no way motor," and 

 further urge (p. 75) the impossible view that the 

 infant's (very doubtful) manifestations of spontaneous 

 activity " seem to show that the pyramidal tract has 

 a rdle essentially inhibitory instead of dynamogenic. " 

 The authors might to their advantage have kept in 

 mind the words of their own preface (p. 16) : — 



" Nous avons laiss^ k dessein de c6td dans nos 

 travaux et recherches les hypotheses, ... en nous 

 imposant de ne pas sortir du cadre de I'exp^rience et 

 des donn^es precises." 



The subject of the second far more satisfactory study 

 was a "xiphopage," as the authors call it, in other 

 words, an example of Siamese twins. It was com- 

 posed of two perfectly formed Chinese boys, fifteen 

 years old, of whom the right was called Liao Toun 

 Chen and the left Liao Sienne Chen. They were 

 united in the region of the xiphoid part of the sternum 

 by a somewhat extensible bridge of tissue which con- 

 tained cartilage, blood vessels, and very probably a 

 remnant of hepatic substance. This bridge revealed 

 a narrow median anaesthetic zone, surrounded on 

 either side by a hypoaesthetic zone, cutaneous stimu- 

 lation of which affected only that individual to whom 

 the stimulated area was nearest, but never both in- 

 dividuals. It is, however, difficult to reconcile this 

 interesting observation with another, viz. that if the 

 points of Weber's compasses were separated by 

 15mm., and the compasses placed astride the median 

 anaesthetic zone, so that one point rested on an area 

 felt by one subject, and the other on an area felt by 

 the other subject, then each child perceived that he 

 was touched in two points. The characteristics of the 

 two children were very different. Liao Toun Chen 

 was mentally and physically more vigorous than his 

 brother. He was more curious and roguish, while 

 Liao Sienne Chen was more attentive and serious. 

 The latter, as we should expect, gave shorter and 

 more trustworthy reaction-times. His sensibility to 

 stimuli was also keener. His body-temperature and 

 his arterial pressure were higher than those of his 

 stronger brother, who in turn breathed with greater 

 rapidity, and had a more frequent pulse. Save in 



