440 GENERAL ANATOMY. 



anus, induce the action of the stomach, the bladder, and the 

 intestines. The will has little control over the contractility 

 of these muscles; yet the czsophagus, the rectum, the bladder, 

 and even the stomach are not altogether independent of it; it 

 appears even that the uterus, at least in birds, is also some- 

 times subject to the will. The small intestine, on the con- 

 trary, is not at all under its control ; the heart is equally in- 

 dependent of it. And yet the case is still cited of an English 

 captain, reported by Dr. Cheyne, and since related by all 

 physiologists, and that of the late Dr. Bayle, reported by M. 

 Ribes, who could at pleasure slacken or suspend the move- 

 ments of the heart. But if the interior muscles are not sub- 

 ject to the ordinary influencegof the will, the strong affections 

 of the soul, and lively emotions of the mind, influence them in 

 the most evident manner. 



Haller, in admitting that muscular power is inherent in the 

 muscles, and that nervous action is only the exciting cause of 

 it, was led to admit, and most of his successors have admitted 

 still more positively than himself, that the interior muscles 

 are independent of the nervous action, at least in their ordina- 

 ry and regular movements. The experiments of Legallois 

 afterwards induced the admission of a directly contrary opin- 

 ion. The more recent experiments of M. Cliff,* and those of 

 M. Wilson Philip,! and the comparative observation of other 

 animals, of monstrous embryos and foetuses, were calculated to 

 modify both these conclusions. Known facts demonstrate, in 

 effect, that the interior muscles are independent of the nervous 

 spinal marrow, in animals and monstrous foetuses which have 

 none, as well as in embryos which as yet have acquired none; 

 little dependent on it in young animals in which its influence 

 is not of long standing, and in animals of an inferior order, in 

 which the nervous action has not a well determined centre; 

 but are, on the contrary, dependent on that organ in the adult 

 man; they are moreover greatly influenced by its lesions, and 

 still more so by sudden lesions than by slow alterations. 



* Philos. trans. Ann. 1815. 



\Anexptr. Ing. into the laws of the vital functions, &c. Loml. 1818. 



