AND ANIMAL LIFE. 73 



ed to appreciate the force and correctness of 

 what follows, commencing with the inferences 

 which WILSON PHILIP supposes to be legiti- 

 mately drawn from his ingenious and well con- 

 ducted experiments ; and if these be taken in the 

 order presented to the reader, we shall have a 

 better opportunity of judging of the soundness 

 of his views ; and of the value of his experiments. 

 LXV. His first and second inferences, are, " That 

 the function of secretion is destroyed by dividing 

 the nerves of the secreting organs" 



" That it may be restored after it is thus destroy- 

 ed, by the galvanic influence. 9 '* 



His Experiments, 44 and 45, are adduced to 

 prove the first inference. In 44, the eighth pair 

 of nerves were divided in one rabbit, in the other 

 they were laid bare, and, after being raised on a 

 probe were replaced uninjured. Both were al- 

 lowed to eat parsley after the operation. In 

 twenty hours from the division of the nerves, 

 the rabbit which had undergone this operation 

 died, and the one in which the nerves were only 

 laid bare, was immediately killed to allow the 

 experimenter to compare the two. In the latter 

 the food was digested as usual, but in the former 

 the food was found wholly unchanged by the 

 digestive process. Experiment 45 was perform* 

 ed to ascertain whether the distended stomach, 

 which was always a consequence in the rabbit 



* Dr WILSON PHILIP on the Vital Functions, p. 247. 



