226 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM r 



habits of a frog, leading its natural life, involve 

 such simple adaptations to surrounding condition^ 

 that the machinery which is competent to do so 

 much without the intervention 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 un- 

 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 illustrates 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 two hundred yards, his right 

 leg became similarly affected, and he lost his 

 senses. When he recovered them, three weeks 



1 "Do 1'Automatisme de la Memoire ct Ju Souvenir, dans lo 

 SomnambulumepathologiqUie." ParlcDi. K. .Mcsnet. M<-dcvm 

 :>itul S;iiiit-Aiitnim>. L' Union. Mtd/calc, Juillct 21 ct23, 

 1874. My attention was first called to a summary of this 

 remarkable case, \vluYh appeared in the Journal dcs D6bats for 

 the 7th of August, 1874, by my friend General Stnidi. \. I'.K.S. 



