ON THE 
SPINAL ANIMAL 
BEING THE MARSHALL HALL PRIZE ADDRESS BY 
CHARLES S. SHERRINGTON, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen, 
When your Society was kind enough to recognize some work of mine by the 
coveted Marshall Hall Prize, it extended to me at the same time your hospitality for a short 
address. In answer to that invitation I now venture to lay before you a few remarks regarding 
the physiology of the spinal cord. That the prize bequest to the Society is associated with the 
name of Marshall Hall, sufficiently, I think, justifies my choice of such a theme. 
Marshall Hall, like not a few investigators of enthusiasm, seems to have been at little 
pains to know what of his subject had been ascertained by previous workers. He concluded from 
his own observations that the spinal cord and the whole nervous system could be well regarded 
from the physiological standpoint as a linked series of reflex arcs. The idea was not a new one, 
but in his hands it obtained new illustrative facts. The doctrine of the cord as a spinal chain of 
functional segments the units of which are reflex arcs, gained much furtherance from the 
advocacy of Marshall Hall. 
The segmental arrangement of the spinal nerves in their gross anatomy does not, of course, 
necessarily carry with it any proof of the functional segmentation of the cord. That proof can 
be furnished only by analysis of the functional plan. A point of first importance for this question 
is the capacity of the fractionated spinal cord. Herbert Mayot by his experiment sliowing the 
pupil reflex to be elicitable when but a single cranial segment remains, and LegalloisJ by his 
localization of the respiratory centre in the bulb, Iiad at the outset of the century laid the founda- 
tion of the segmental theory of the functions of the cord. Marshall Hall§ and Grainger || 
further contributed experiments demonstrating the functional powers of spinal fractions. The 
latter drew significant observations from the reflex movements of invertebrata. The study of the 
functions of the nerve-chain of invertebrata became later neglected, most unwisely. Quite 
*From Vol. 82 of the ' Me.lico-Chinirgical Transactions, 
t ' Physiol. Commentaries,' London, 1823. 
J 1830. 
§' Memoirs on tlie Nervous System,' London, 1838. 
ll'Functions of the Spinal Cord,' London, 1837. 
