Vascular and Visceral Factors for the Genesis of Emotion, 393 



the spinal cord has been severed in the lower cervical region. 

 Such a severance lies headward of the exit and entrance of all that 

 system of nerves usually embraced under the term " sympathetic 

 system." It therefore sunders from the brain all nexus with the 

 thoracic, abdominal and pelvic viscera, except that existent through 

 certain cranial nerves. It also cuts off all the blood vessels from the 

 bulbar vasomotor centre, except for certain scanty communications 

 through the cranial nerves. The skin and motor organs are, as far as 

 the shoulder, likewise cut off from all communication with the brain. 

 Therefore behind that level they are precluded from contributing to 

 nervous processes of emotion, either in their centripetal or their centri- 

 fugal phases. 



In each of these dogs the observations have been prolonged for 

 several months subsequent to the operation of transection ; in none 

 has any impairment whatever of emotional character, so far as 

 demonstrable, been detected. To study emotion in a lower animal is 

 not altogether easy — even in a dog. But if reliance be placed on the 

 signs that are usually taken to signify pleasure, anger, fear, disgust, 

 then these animals showed them as unmistakably after as prior to the 

 transection of the cervical spinal cord. The sight of, or the sound of, the 

 attendant who kept them evoked from them the same joyous activity 

 and animated caressful pose of head and feature as formerly. Towards 

 friends and enemies among their fellow-inmates of the animal house 

 they displayed as markedly as ever their liking or their rage. To 

 give an instance, I saw fear notably displayed by one of the dogs, a 

 young animal, approached and threatened by a powerful old Macaque 

 monkey. The lowering of the head, the dejected half-averted face, 

 and the drooped ears contributed to indicate existence of an emotion 

 as lively as the animal had ever shown us before the spinal operation 

 had been made. 



An observation of confirmatory kind I once obtained in the labora- 

 tory of my friend Professor Mosso of Turin. In a young dog under 

 deep chloroform narcosis, I had performed a spinal transection close 

 behind the origin of the phrenic nerves. Six weeks later, the trauma 

 having completely healed and the condition of spinal shock having 

 largely subsided, I placed the animal once more under chloroform, 

 but this time not profoundly. I, connected the femoral artery with 

 the mercurial kymograph and proceeded to record the arterial pres- 

 sure, allowing the chloroformisation gradually to pass off. As the 

 ■depth of the narcosis waned, the breathing became quicker and less 

 regular. The waking of the animal was accompanied by no pain, 

 because the whole body was insentient behind the cervical region, and 

 the kymograph attachment was in the femoral region. I was intend- 

 ing to faradise a branch of one of the nerves of the right hind limb. 

 Inductorium, electrodes, galvanic cells, and whole electric circuit stood 



