244 AYERS. [Vol. VI. 



be maintained by assuming that the motions of the head and 

 sensations of giddiness on canal section were due entirely to 

 the injury inflicted on the canals, and Goltz recognized three 

 essential structures, the injury to any one of which would be 

 sufficient to cause the disturbances observed on what was sup- 

 posed to be simple canal sections : the central organ, the periph- 

 eral end organs and their connecting fibres with the central 

 apparatus, and the motor apparatus and connections. If, then, 

 the disturbances were due solely to the section of the canals, it 

 must be true that no injury to the brain has taken place. Goltz 

 believed that injury to the brain was rigorously excluded in his 

 operations on the canals. 



Goltz, Brown-Sequard, and Flourens all agree that there must 

 be other nervous elements present in the auditory nerve besides 

 those ordinarily recognized and to whose irritation the phe- 

 nomena of giddiness were due, an assumption which the investi- 

 gations of Magendie, Valentine, and Schiff contradict. Schiff 

 (1859, 252) says: "Die Hypothese, dass der Acusticus in zwei 

 Nerven zerfalle, von denen der eine dem Gehor diene, wahrend 

 der andere die eigenthiimlichen Bewegungen des Kopfes ver- 

 mittle, die Flourens nach der Durchschneidung der halbzirkel- 

 formigen Kanale beschrieb, entbehrt aller Begrundung." 



Let us examine how far Goltz's view has been sustained. 

 Pathologists believed that the evidence from pathology was not 

 in favor of Goltz's view, and Boettcher by careful experimental 

 investigations on Pigeons proved that Goltz's hypothesis rested 

 on false conclusions drawn from incomplete knowledge of the 

 results of the so-called canal section. It is not true that motor 

 disturbances of the body are direct consequences of the abnor- 

 mal position of the head following canal section, but, on the 

 other hand, the abnormal position of the head is a consequence 

 of injury to the brain as a result of the operation of canal sec- 

 tion as carried out by Goltz. Boettcher concluded that all dis- 

 turbances of the motor apparatus after canal section were 

 referable to brain lesions, especially to the cerebellar peduncles, 

 since he was able to section the canals without the appearance 

 of the motions attributed to them. 



Boettcher's observations were thoroughly substantiated by 

 the experiments of Fraulein Tomaszewicz (1877, 276). As Boett- 

 cher had already resected the horizontal and vertical canals in 



