702 PHYSIOLOaY IN RELATION TO 



by its influence on the blood-vessels, in the minds of persons who 

 may be averse to multiplying laws by cases such as these. We 

 go to a case, as I suppose most of us may, like myself, have gone, 

 and we frequently find one side of the body hot, and the other 

 cold. This latter, the friends will tell us, is the paralysed part ; 

 we find that it is not; and Bernard's experiments, and Brown- 

 Sequard's (1. c. p. 146), enable us to understand why this is so. 

 An excellent case to the same effect, showing how increase of vital 

 properties may take place in the entire absence of any connection 

 with the upper part of the cord or brain, may be given from a 

 paper of the late Sir B. C. Brodie's, in the twentieth volume (1837) of 

 the * Medico-Chirurgical Transactions.' ' A man was admitted into 

 St. George's Hospital, in whom there was a forcible separation of 

 the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae, attended with an effusion of 

 blood within the theca vertebralis, and laceration of the lower part 

 of the cervical portion of the spinal cord. Respiration was per- 

 formed by the diaphragm only — of course, in a very imperfect 

 manner. The patient died at the end of twenty-two hours ; and, 

 for some time previously to his death, he breathed at long in- 

 tervals; the pulse being weak, and the countenance livid. At 

 length, there were not more than five or six respirations in a 

 minute. Nevertheless, when the ball of a thermometer was placed 

 between the scrotum and the thigh, the quicksilver rose to 111° 

 of Fahrenheit's scale. Immediately after death, the temperature 

 was examined in the same manner, and found to be still the 

 same.' 



The larger size of a horse's hoof, the nerves of which had been 

 divided, should probably be similarly explained by the greater afflux 

 of blood which would set in thither temporarily until the continuity 

 of the nerve was re-established. (Ogle, 'Med. Times and Gazette,' 

 Nov. 3, 1866.) And, finally, such an occurrence as the inflamma- 

 tion of skin, cartilage, or cornea, after its own sweet will, and not 

 in the line of an irritated nerve passing through it or near it 

 (Virchow's 'Cell. Path.,' Chance's translation, p. 299), seems to 

 speak plainly enough to the self-sufficiency of animal cells to 

 respond to what Niemeyer calls ' Insulte,' without appealing to any 

 higher powers for assistance ; just, in fact, as though they were as 

 little animal, as truly vegetable, and as independent of any cranio- 

 spinal centre as the gall-producing oak or willow. 



