168 Inheritance of Acquired Characters 
there appeared just such a muscular atrophy of the thigh 
and of the leg.'* 
The desperate endeavor which Weismann has made 
to refute the results of these experiments, at least in 
relation to the transmissibility of epilepsy, is well known, 
objecting that this affection was due only to an infection 
innoculated in the parents after operation and so trans- 
mitted to the germ. Brown Sequard has signally over- 
come this objection by showing that epilepsy is not 
produced by all nerve sections but only by some, and 
that further it can be provoked also by the simple crush- 
ing of the sciatic nerve without any breaking of the skin, 
and this would exclude the possibility of any infection 
whatever. 
Nevertheless it is necessary to recognize the fact that 
these experiments, while they undoubtedly demonstrate 
the inheritance of the effects of certain lesions, are not 
enough to produce a firm and general conviction of the 
inheritance of acquired characters among the numerous 
naturalists and biologists who are in no wise blind fol- 
lowers of Weismann’s theories; perhaps because what’ 
is inherited in these cases is always somewhat morbid 
and abnormal. In short the determination of the ques- 
tion requires certain proof of the inheritance of definite 
normal peculiarities acquired by functional adaptation. 
We see then, that whoever proposes systematically 
to hunt out a weak point in every fact adduced in support 
of the Lemarckian principle, by which its value as proof 
can be shaken, can usually if not always find it. But 
*5Brown Séquard: Faits nouveaux établissant l’extréme fré- 
quence de la transmission, par hérédité, d’états organiques morbides, 
produits accidentellement chez des ascendants. Comptes Rendus de 
VAcad. der Sciences. T. XCIV, No. 11, March 13, 1882. P. 697—700. 
