REPORT ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 67 



or objects which surround them. They no longer seek food, 

 or perform any action announcing a comljination of ideas. Thus 

 the most docile and intelhgent dogs lost all power of compre- 

 hending signs or words which were before familiar to them, 

 became indifferent to menaces or caresses, were no longer 

 amenable to authority, and retained no remembrance of places, 

 of things, or of persons. They saw distinctly food presented 

 to them, but had ceased to associate with its external qualities 

 all perception of its relations to themselves as an object of de- 

 sire. The anterior or frontal part of the brain is hence inferred 

 to be the seat of several intellectual faculties. Its removal oc- 

 casions a state resembling idiotism, characterized by loss of the 

 power of discriminating external objects, which, however, co- 

 exists with the faculties of sensation. 



It will be unnecessary to describe fully in this place the ex- 

 periments of Professor Rolando of Turin, performed in 1809, and 

 published in Magendie's Journal, tom. iii., 1823, since the more 

 important of his facts have reference, not to the brain-proper, 

 but to the cerebellum. His paper certainly contains some cu- 

 rious anticipations of phenomena, since more accurately ob- 

 served by Flourens and Magendie ; yet as regards the brain, 

 properly so called, his results are vague and inconclusive. 

 Accident, rather than a well matured design, seems to have 

 directed what parts of the brain he should remove ; and from 

 having comprehended in the same injury totally distinct anato- 

 mical divisions, he has rendered it impossible to arrive at the 

 precise function of any one part. Thus we are told that injury 

 of the thalami optici and tubercula quadrigemina in a dog was 

 followed by violent muscular contractions. Now all subsequent 

 experimenters agree, that irritation of the thalami is incapable 

 of inducing convulsive motions ; and Flourens has proved that 

 this property has its beginning in the tubercula, — an important 

 fact, which Rolando, with a little more precision in anatomical 

 manipulation, could scarcely have failed to discover. 



Magendie has described* some curious experiments on the 

 corpora striata, which, though closely analogous in their results 

 to those on the cerebellum, have their proper place in this 

 section. Removal of one corpus striatum was followed by no 

 remarkable change ; but when both had been cut away, the 

 animal rushed violently forwards, never deviating from a recti- 

 linear course, and striking against any objects in its way. In his 

 lecture of February 7, 1828, Magendie, in the presence of his 

 class, removed both corpora striata from a rabbit. The anunal 



* Journal de Physiologie, tom. iii. p. 376. 



