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by the priority of Hooke and Mayow. We may say the same of 
Prochaska and Marshall Hall. Had not Lavoisier and Priestley, 
or some one else, established their theories, no mention would 
have been made of Hooke and Mayow, except as curious 
experimenters. Had not Marshall Hall and Miiller made the 
Reflex Theory a European doctrine, we should not have heard 
of Prochaska ; for, as I have shown, the Reflex Theory had no 
existence among scientific doctrines ; it had not attracted even 
the notoriety of a doctrine considered to be absurd. 
During the half-century which elapsed between Prochaska 
and Marshall Hall, the subject was approached by another 
route, namely, the investigations into the spinal chord, which 
became gradually of great importance. It will surprise the 
student of our day, aware of the large place occupied in 
physiology and pathology by the phenomena assigned to the 
spinal chord, to see how little notice was taken of it only a 
few years ago. Two indications will suffice. Riclierand’s 
Physiology, which was long accounted as the first of text 
books, has no notice whatever of the spinal chord, in the edition 
published in 1807 ; and the work of Rudolpki, pubhshed in 
1823, out of an entire volume given to the nervous system, 
devotes but one page to the spinal chord, and that is occupied 
with discrediting the ideas of Legallois, who made it a sensorial 
centre. Nevertheless, as I said, experimentalists were busy. 
In 1803, J. J. Sue advanced the hypothesis that the spinal 
chord was capable, to some extent, of replacing the functions 
of the brain.* * * § In 1812, Legallois published his celebrated. 
work,f wherein this idea of Sue’s was developed and confirmed 
by very striking- evidence, showing that, in the absence of the 
brain, the chord became a centre of sensation and volition ; 
showing also that separate portions of the chord were separate 
centres, having separate bodily actions under them control. In 
1817, Frayt declared the chord to be the organ which presided 
over all the internal economy, which during walking and 
sleeping regulated all the organic actions, and acted as their 
sensorial centre. In the same year, Wilson Philip § also 
maintained the sensorial character of the spinal chord. In 
1822, Sir Gilbert Blane opposed this idea, and denied that the 
actions of decapitated animals, as well as the instinctive actions 
of suckiug or breathing, were prompted by sensation. He held 
the brain to be the exclusive seat of sensation, and was 
consistent in his view that all instinctive and automatic actions 
were independent of sensation. || 
* Sue : Eeclierches sur la Vitalite. 
t Legallois : Experiences sur le Principe de la Vie. 
f Fray : Essai sur VOrigine des Corps organises et inorganises. 
§ Wilson Philip : Inquiries into the Laics of the Vital Functions. 
|| Gilbert Blane ; Croonian Lecture in Select Dissertations. 
