IX.] ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 223 



It is obvious, that had Descartes been acquainted 

 with these remarkable results of modern research, 

 they would have furnished him with far more power- 

 ful arguments than he possessed in favour of his view 

 of the automatism of brutes. The habits of a frog, 

 leading its natural life, involve such simple adapta- 

 tions to surrounding conditions, that the machinery 

 which is competent to do so much without the inter- 

 vention of consciousness, might well do all. And this 

 argument is vastly strengthened by what has been 

 learned in recent times of the marvellously complex 

 operations which are performed mechanically, and to 

 all appearance without consciousness, by men, when, 

 in consequence of injury or disease, they are reduced 

 to a condition more or less comparable to that of a 

 frog, in which the anterior part of the brain has been 

 removed. A case has recently been published by an 

 eminent French physician, Dr. Mesnet, which illus- 

 trates this condition so remarkably, that I make no 

 apology for dwelling upon it at considerable length. 1 



A sergeant of the French army, F , twenty- 

 seven years of age, was wounded during the battle of 

 Bazeilles, by a ball which fractured his left parietal 

 bone. He ran his bayonet through the Prussian 

 soldier who wounded him, but almost immediately 

 his right arm became paralysed ; after walking about 



1 "De 1'Automatisme de la Memoire et du Souvenir, dans le 

 Somnambulisme pathologique." Par le Dr. E. Mesnet, Medecin de 

 I'Hopital Saint- Antoine. "L'Union Medicale," Juillet 21 et 23, 1874. 

 My attention was first called to a summary of this remarkable case, 

 which appeared in the " Journal des Debats " for the 7th of August 

 1874, by my friend General Straohey, F.E.S. 



