THE SPINAL ANIMAL 41 
subjected to currents absolutely unbearable upon the tongue, elicits no response, and probably no 
movement whatsoever. To the whole popliteal nerve, representing an area of sentient skin which 
includes the entire sole and much of the leg besides, intolerable faradisation can be applied 
without response. A more impassable condition of block or torpor can hardly be imagined ; its 
depth of negation resembles, to superficial examination, profound chloroform poisoning. 
Shock is not only more severe in the monkey than in the other laboratory types, but it is 
also more lasting, and its symptoms are more profound and prolcmged than in any other animal I 
have observed. The symptoms of shock, in man\' monkeys, persist for days instead of hours and 
minutes, as in cat and dog. It is important to note that in the monkey, much of what we are, 
from observations upon the lower animal types, inclined to regard as temporary, and relegate to 
block or 'shock,' in Goltz's language Hc>ntnungse7Sche'tnungeH''--~not '■ Amfalhmchnnungm'' — 
proves, under prolonged observation to be, I must admit, permanent ; in fact, to be true deficiency 
phenomenon. Every histologist acquainted with the comparative structure of the spinal cord in the 
ape and in the dog must have been impressed with the far greater complexity obvious in the 
former. The above evidence is in accord with that, for it shows that the same trauma inflicted 
upon the cord leads, in the monke)', to mucli heavier permanent defect than in the dog; just as, 
in fact, ablations of the cortex cerebri are pregnant with far greater ' A infalherscheinungen ' in the 
monkey (Ferrier, H. Munk, Schafer, Mott) than in the dog (Goltz). It is reasonable to argue 
still severer results in the case of the human spinal cord ; of which, again, we know the minute 
structure to be yet more complex still. The permanent damage done is therefore, as well as the 
initial shock, disproportionately greater in tnonkey than in cat and dog. 
My own experience leads me to think that the condition of a spinal cord isolated by a 
spinal transection is often more normal a few hours after tlie transection than it is when long 
periods of weeks and months are allowed to elapse. I am well aware that this is contrary to the 
opinion of Goltz and others. The advantage believed to accrue from waiting is that the 
phenomena of shock may have time to pass oflF as completely as possible. How long the phenomena 
of shock may last at longest is a question on which very different views are held. Goltz, to 
whose trenchant observations and bold system of experiment we owe so much of our knowledge of 
the physiology of the central nervous system, is the founder of a school which works in the belief 
that the phenomenon of shock may persist for months, even years. It is, as far as not, merely a 
matter of nomenclature, a question on which no definite decision seems as yet possible. I my self 
have gradually been driven to the belief that ' shock ' does not take long to pass off, i.e. does not 
at longest persist for more than a few weeks. I am not considering here the complications arising 
out of long badly-healing and suppurative wounds, and the continual irritation they may produce 
if situate in the nervous system. But though shock passes off, the alterations produced in the 
isolated cord or piece of cord (by permanent withdrawal of the influences it has lived accustomed 
to receive from other portions of the central nervous system) progress, and are in a sense 
cumulative. The decreasing depression merges — at present inextricably for us — in the increasing 
onset of an ' isolation-dystrophy.' Much of what is called ' shock,' in regard to the mammalian 
cord, is, I believe, due to ' isolation-dystrophy,' and is really permanent, — that is to say, would 
F 
