95 



men of eggs, are unable to produce any apparent change in 

 rigid limbs. 



The following conclusions are to be drawn from the facts 

 related in this article : 



1st. Red blood, i. e. richly oxygenated blood (arterial or 

 venous) is able to revive irritability in muscles, four or five hours 

 after these organs have lost this property. 



2d. Red blood is able to revive the vital properties of 

 nerves and nervous centres, when these properties have not been 

 lost for more than about an hour. 



3d. Muscular irritability can be maintained for more than 41 

 hours, by mere injections of blood, in limbs separated from the 

 body of a rabbit. 



4th. Muscular irritability may be re-established in limbs ren- 

 dered rigid by chloroform for many days, even ten days. 



XXIX CASES OF LOSS OF SENSIBILITY ON ONE SIDE OF THE BODY. 



AND LOSS OF VOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS ON THE OTHER SIDE. 



It has been objected to me that if the transmission of sensitive 

 impressions, in the spinal cord, takes place, as I have tried to 

 prove in a former part of this sketch (Art. XIX,) so that those 

 coming from the left side of the body, are mostly conveyed to 

 the sensorium along the right side of the spinal cord, et vice 

 versa physicians should have some times found in man the 

 same thing that I have discovered in animals. 



Many reasons have prevented physicians from making such a 

 discovery: In the first place, an injury or a pathological altera- 

 tion, limited to a lateral half of the spinal cord, is very rare. 

 Besides, the idea that there is no crossing of fibres in the spinal 

 cord, has been an obstacle to a thorough examination of many 

 pathological cases, and it has been so in a case observed by Boyer. 



There are but few cases on record in which there was a loss 

 or a diminution of sensibility on one side, and of voluntary 

 movements on the other. I will give here a short account of 

 some cases of that kind, which are very interesting. 



The first one I will relate has been observed by Boyer: 



A drummer, of the National Guard of Paris, received a wound 

 in the back of his neck. A sword had been thrown at him, and 

 had penetrated the superior part of the right lateral half of the 



