I 



MEDICINE IN MODERN TIMES. 705 



a large artery. Now we know that movements do continue in a 

 portion of intestine which has been deprived of its mesentery, and 

 we ascribe the production of these movements to the presence in 

 the walls of the intestine of the plexuses demonstrated to us by 

 Meissner and Auerbach ; and, if we may ascribe like effects to like 

 causes, we may ascribe the jpost mortem twitchings of muscles to 

 Professor Beale's neuro-muscular apparatus. In like manner we 

 should expect from similar reasons, and we do find, as a matter of 

 fact, this same neuro-muscular irritability greatly prominent in the 

 small-brained cold-blooded vertebrata, and in hibernating mammals. 

 In all of these animals alike, the central nerve-system is small 

 relatively to the entire mass of their bodies ; whilst in birds, or at 

 least in the more highly organised of the class — for birds, like 

 other bipeds, differ as to the mass and use of the brain (see Parker, 

 'Zool. Soc. Trans.' v. 1862, p. 207) — the brain may hold a more 

 favourable relation to the entire mass of their bodies than in any 

 other class of animals ; and in birds, as is well known, with some 

 few reptile-like exceptions, such as the peewit, muscular irritability 

 ceases almost with their last act of expiration. 



Whilst speaking of this condition occasionally found in the 

 muscles after death, I am tempted to say a few words of the empty 

 condition of the arteries which is almost constantly found after 

 death. I observe that Von Bezold has explained this well-known 

 phaenomenon as being due to a last nervous impulse communicated 

 to the small peripheral vessels from the hrain. His words are 

 (^ Untersuchungen aus dem Physiologischen Laboratorium in Wiirz- 

 burg,' Heft ii. pp. 358, 359, 1867): ' Sicher ist aber ein ungemein 

 wichtiges Moment hierbei die Innervation der Muskeln in den 

 kleinen Gefassen des Korpers. Man stelle sich vor, dass in der 

 Agonie, in Todes-Kampfe, das vasomotorische central Organ im 

 Gehirn noch in Krampf-zustande versetzt wird, welche mit Pausen 

 der Erschopfung abwechseln . . . Ausserdem ist gezeigt worden, 

 dass jenes letzte Ueberpumpen des Blutes aus den Arterien in die 

 Venen, bei den Saugethieren wenigstens, unter dem Einfluss einer 

 letzter Thatigkeit des Gehirns geschieht.' Surely all these ' Vor- 

 stellungen ' would have been spared, if Professor Von Bezold had 

 been acquainted with Mr. Lister's papers, or even with those points 

 in them to which I have referred. Indeed, that his view is un- 

 tenable, is clear from a consideration of the fact that the circulation 



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