368 Philosophical transactions. - [anno 1767. 



have taken place from the existence of the principal arteries and veins, could not 

 have had any other moving power than the circulation of the mother itself. 

 Hence this child, monstrous as it was, demonstrates the circulation of the blood 

 from the mother to the foetus, and from the foetus to the mother again ; which 

 some moderns deny, and others endeavour at least to render doubtful. He pre- 

 sented to the Academy at Rouen some years ago, several observations which fa- 

 voured the ancient system ; the present comes to their support, to give this ex- 

 cellent hypothesis of Harvey all the credit it deserves. 



The child he speaks of had no mouth, oesophagus, nor stomach ; thus it could 

 not, by that usual passage, be nourished from the waters that surrounded it; it 

 could not absorb from the surrounding fluid wherewith to fill its vessels and sup- 

 ply its growth. It therefore follows, that it received both its arterial and ali- 

 mentary fluids from the mother by the umbilical cord, and that it owed every 

 thing to that circulation, which some would attempt to annihilate. In the in- 

 testines of new born children we find a black excrement, called meconium ; this 

 black pulp can receive its colour only from a bile thickened by retention, and 

 poured directly from the ductus choledochus into the duodenum. Now this foetus 

 having no liver, nor gall bladder, &c. could have no meconium ; therefore the 

 pulp found in the intestines was of an ash-colour. 



This monster had so little brain, that that viscus must have been of small 

 import towards the functions of this animal. And yet all these brainless foetuses 

 are very lively. Mr. Denis, who, in his 12th conference, has given an account 

 of one of them, and M. Vaissiere, who sent Mr. le C. one from Toulouse, the 

 year before, both remark, " that these children are remarkably lively in the mo- 

 ther's belly; that they were in violent motion at the time of labour; that the mo- 

 ment they were in the world they seemed suffocated, and became all at once mo- 

 tionless." This is a matter worthy of much reflection. How can we conceive 

 there can be sensation and motion, without hardly any brain in one of these 

 monsters; and absolutely without any in the other.'' Sensibility, sensations, and 

 passions, may exist without the brain, and have their seat in its meninges, and 

 in the coats of the nerves formed by those meninges. If he had not endeavoured 

 to prove that point in his physiology, and lately in his dissertation on the sensi- 

 bility of the dura and pia mater, the observations of children and animals born 

 without brain, which are pretty considerable in number, would demonstrate it by 

 facts. That these children are more lively, that is, more sensible, he attributes 

 to their having little of the nervous juice, though not less of the active fluid. 

 This nervous juice he had termed fluide conservateur, the preserving fluid, in his 

 physiology. It is long since he had observed that an abundance of this nervous 

 juice produces the contrary of vivacity ; and, as a consequence of our principles, 

 long sleep, or rigid continency for a length of time, renders us heavy and be- 



