14 



marrow.* Therefore I think I am allowed to maintain that after 

 such an injury, the nerves going to these organs, and more par- 

 ticularly to the kidneys, do nothing but spend little by little 

 the nervous force, originally and principally derived from the 

 spinal marrow, which is the chief, if not the exclusive centre of 

 its production ; thence the persistence of the renal secretion, as 

 well as that of the movements of the heart, the intestinal canal, 

 the uterine cornua, etc." 



I could relate a great many experiments proving the incorrect- 

 ness of Longet's theory, but a single one is sufficient. I have kept 

 living, nearly three months, a young cat, on which the spinal 

 cord had been completely destroyed from the eleventh or twelfth 

 costal vertebra to its termination. This cat has lived all that 

 time in apparently good health, and its urine has always been 

 perfectly normal. It was acid, as is the case constantly in cats 

 fed on meat, milk and bread. The bladder was palsied, but the 

 sphincter vesicae was generally contracted, so that every day I 

 had to compress the abdomen and the bladder to empty this 

 pouch. When I remained two days without doing that ope- 

 ration, the bladder contracted in consequence of the excitation 

 produced on its muscular fibres by their distension. 



This fact clearly proves that the urinary secretion is not under 

 the dependence of the spinal cord. 



According to Krimer, the medulla oblongata is the nervous 

 centre upon which the urinary secretion depends. My experi- 

 ments prove that this opinion is incorrect : 1st. After the destruc- 

 tion of the medulla oblongata in frogs, I have found that the 

 secretion of urine remains as long as the animals have lived, i. e., 

 three or four months. 2d. On hybernating mammals, in winter 

 time I have extirpated the medulla oblongata, after having 

 emptied the bladder. These animals have lived a little more 

 than a day, when I took the precaution of insufflating air in their 

 lungs many times each hour. After their death the bladder was 

 found full of urine apparently normal. 



The medulla oblongata is not therefore a centre on which the 

 urinary secretion depends. 



4. The well known opinions of Segalas, W. Philip, Krimer, 



* The italics are Longet's. 



