﻿ii4 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



ago, and then yielded negative results, it was only 

 within the last decade that I resumed it more system- 

 atically, and under the tutelage of Brown-Sequard 

 himself. During the last two years, however, the 

 experiments have been so much interrupted by ill- 

 ness that even now the research is far from complete. 

 Therefore I will here confine myself to a tabular 

 statement of the results as far as they have hitherto 

 gone, on the understanding that, in so far as they 

 are negative or doubtful, I am not yet prepared to 

 announce them as final. 



We may take Brown-S^quard's propositions in his 

 own order, as already given on page 104. 



1st. Appearance of epilepsy in animals born of parents which 

 had been rendered epileptic by an injury to the spinal cord. 



2nd. Appearance of epilepsy also in animals born of parents 

 which had been rendered epileptic by section of the sciatic nerve. 



I did not repeat these experiments with a view 

 to producing epilepsy, because, as above stated, they 

 had been already and sufficiently corroborated in 

 this respect. But I repeated many times the experi- 

 ments of dividing the sciatic nerve for the purpose of 

 testing the statements made later on in paragraphs 

 7 and 8, and observed that it almost always had 

 the effect of producing epilepsy in the animal thus 

 operated upon — and this of a peculiar kind, the chief 

 characteristics of which may here be summarized. 

 The epileptiform habit does not supervene until 

 some considerable time after the operation ; it is 

 then transitory, lasting only for some weeks or 

 months. While the habit endures the fits never 

 occur spontaneously, but only as a result of irritating 

 a small area of skin behind the ear on the same side of 



