230 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



It is obvious, that had Descajcies been acquainted 

 with these remarkable results of modern research, they 

 would have furnished him with far more powerful argu- 

 ments 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 adaptations to sur- 

 rounding conditions, that the machinery which is compe- 

 tent to do so much without the intervention of con- 

 sciousness, 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 illustrates this condition so remarkably, 

 that I make no apology for dwelling upon it at con- 

 siderable length.* 



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 



Functionen dcr Nervencentren des Froschcs," published in 1869. I have 

 repeated GSltz's experiments, and obtained the same results. 



* " De PAutomatisme de la Memoire et du Souvenir, dans le Somnam- 

 bnlisme pathologique." Par le Dr. E. Mesnet, Medecin de 1'Hopital Saint- 

 Antoine. "I/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 

 Strachey, F.R.S. 



