FLOURENS 



65 



" M. Flourens a circonscrit ce centre avec une 

 scrupuleuse precision, et lui a donne le nom de 

 noeud vital." (CI. Bernard.) 



Afterward came the discovery of cardiac and 

 other centres in the same portion of the nervous 

 system. Flourens also showed that the cerebellum 

 is concerned with the equilibration of the body, 

 and with the co-ordination of muscular movements ; 

 that an animal, a few days old, deprived of sensa- 

 tion and consciousness by removal of the cerebral 

 hemispheres, was yet able to stand and move 

 forward, but, when the cerebellum was removed, its 

 muscles lost all co-ordinate action. {Recherches 

 Experiment ales, Paris, 1842.) And from his work, 

 and the work of those who followed him, on the 

 semicircular canals of the internal ear, came the 

 evidence that these minute structures are the 

 terminal organs of equilibration : that as the special 

 senses have their terminal apparatus and their 

 central apparatus, so the semicircular canals and 

 the cerebellum are the terminal apparatus and the 

 central apparatus of the sense of equilibrium. 



4. Claude Bernard ( 1 8 1 3 - 1 878). 



The discovery of the vaso-motor nerves, and oi 

 the control of the nervous system over the calibre 

 of the arteries, was made by Claude Bernard at the 

 outset of his work on the influence of the nervous 

 system on the temperature.'* The evidence of 



* A full account of this discovery, and of its relation to the 

 experiments of Brown Sequard, Waller, and Budge, is given 



E 



