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animation. A most interesting memoir — with a portrait — was 

 published by his widow in 1861. 



The following account by Professor C. S. Sherrington will be 

 read with interest : — 



"As to new facts he noted — (1) that eyeball movements are got from ablated 

 reptilian head, and cease on destruction of brain ; (2) that opium increases reflexes 

 though sedative to mind, i.e., distinguished diastaltic from conscious channels : (3) that 

 anencephalous foetus moves to stimulation ; (4) that strychnin picks out movements of 

 ' diastaltic ' order ; (5) that reflexes can be excited easier from nerve-ends than from 

 nerve trunks (he does not seem to have caught the significance of this) ; (6) that a 

 tonus is exhibited by skeletal muscle which is maintained by diastaltic arc, and that 

 sphincter tonus is of this nature. (His experiments give no proof that the tonus is in 

 either case ' reflex ' rather than ' automatic ' ; and his position was remote from 

 to-day's, since he expressly denied Bell's muscular sense and existence of Bell's nerve- 

 circuit, also existence of sensory nerves in muscle, and now, I suppose, most of us 

 regard reflex tonus as maintained by muscular afferents acting on muscular efferents. 

 And in regard to sphincter tonus, I suppose, Goltz's work makes rectal sphincter a 

 ' myogenic ' tonus.) 



" Hall was of much service in boldly illustrating his physiological theories and 

 observations by clinical examples. Also his bold treatment of the cerebro-spinal axis 

 as functionally a segmental series helped greatly, I imagine, to establish that — most 

 useful — point of view ; but it was not original with him, e.g., Legallois and Grainger. 

 I fancy, too, that Hall was the first to speak at all clearly of ' spinal shock ' 

 phenomena, and to begin to distinguish between it and ' collapse ' vascular. 



" In his own estimation his chief advance lay in the doctrine of separateness in 

 the central nervous system of the great sub-system for unconscious reflex action, and 

 another great sub-system for sensation and volition. The two were, according to 

 him, absolutely separate, at least if I read him aright. It seems never to have 

 occurred to him that a peripheral nerve-fibre might, on entering a central nervous 

 system, embouch into channels which led, on the one hand, into his one system, on the other 

 hand into his other. Also he missed the important point that the two are so inter- 

 mingled that many physiological processes pass from one to other ; also that, 

 psychologically, there are a number of reactions that lie intermediate between his 

 extreme types, ' unconscious reflex ' and ' willed action.' This narrowness of view was 

 the more notable, because Grainger (1837) distinctly contended that the peripheral 

 nerve led to both kinds of channels. But, altogether, I could not see any real 

 difference between his (Marshall Hall's) view of movements of headless animals, ifec, and 

 those of many of his predecessors, Hales, Whytt, Prochaska, and even Descartes. 

 Eckhard gives an interesting judgment of Hall in this regard (Beitrage, IX., 54, 1881)." 



JOHN DALTON. 



1766-1844. 



THE Memoir x of the Life and Scientific Researches of John 

 Dalton were issued by one whose name is written large 

 in the scientific and medical history of Manchester — by 

 Wm. Charles Henry, M.D., F.K.S. (Cavendish Society, 1854). I 

 have thought it right to include Dalton amongst the Apostles for 



