FUNCTION OF THE OBLONG CHORD. 421 



sensation and motion that originate at the same portions of the 

 nervous systems 



If the chorda oblongata exists, consciousness and volition be- 

 come evident. Mr. Lawrence saw a child with no more ence- 

 phalon than a bulb, which was a continuation for about an inch 

 above the foramen occipitale from the chorda spinalis, and to 

 which all the nerves inclusively from the fifth to the ninth pair 

 were connected. 1 " The child's breathing and temperature were 

 natural ; it discharged urine and faeces and took food, and at first 

 moved very briskly, and lived four days. M. Lallemand saw such 

 another which lived three days, and cried loudly. 8 M. Ollivier 

 one which not only cried and sucked, but squeezed strongly what 

 was put into its hand. 1 Unfeeling vivisectors, however, have 

 not been contented with such facts supplied by nature, but have 

 repeated them by the knife, and found that, if the cerebrum and 

 cerebellum are removed in a living mammiferous brute, and the 

 same portion of the chorda oblongata left, the poor thing cries 

 on attempts being made to give it pain by pulling its whiskers or 

 applying pungent things to its nose or mouth, and it moves its 

 extremities, in order to escape from its annoyances, sometimes 

 for two hours." An adult hedgehog gratified Dr. Magendie by 

 doing all this for two hours. Cold-blooded animals live much 

 longer ; and, the lower we descend in the scale of brutes, the 

 more diffused appear the powers of the nervous system : in- 

 deed, in the lowest there is, strictly speaking, no brain nor spinal 

 chord, but nervous granules, or distinct ganglions and nerves, 



q Journal de Physiologie, t. iii. p. 154. 



Dr. Magendie, with Desmoulins, asserted that the spinal nerves of the python 

 thus sprang from but one root. But Mr. Mayo found them arise from two, as in 

 all the vertebrated animals. (Outlines, p. 254.) 



* Medico- Chirurgical Trans, vol. v. p. 166. sqq. 



* Obs. Path. p. 86. l Traite de la Moelle Epiniere, p. 155. 



u Anatomic du Syst. Nerv., par MM. Magendie et Desmoulins, p. 560. Dr. 

 Magendie, for whose head the dogs, cats, and rabbits of France would in his active 

 days have offered a reward, if they had known their own interest, says, " It is droll 

 to see animals skip and jump about of their own accord, after you have taken out 

 all their brains a little before the optic tubercles." And as to " new-born kittens," 

 he says, " they tumble over in all directions, and walk so nimbly, if you cut out 

 their hemispheres, that it is quite astonishing." (Journal de Physiologie, t. iii. 

 p. 155.) Above a century and a half ago, in 1673, M. Duverney removed the 

 cerebrum and cerebellum from a pigeon, and found the animal " live for some 

 time, search for aliment, &c." (Phil. Trans, vol. xix.) 



F F 4< 



