662 MR. youatt’s veterinary lectures. 
but the agent in the present case, the nervous influence from 
the brain or spinal chord, is diminished or withdrawn. We can 
produce an artificial palsy whenever we please ; we have but to 
divide the nerve which goes to a certain muscle or limb, and the 
power of motion ceases below the division. 
General Palsy—Ilunian Being .—The human practitioner 
distinguishes between general and local palsy. In the first case, 
the whole body, every organ of motion and of sense, is para¬ 
lyzed. This is evidently an affection of the brain ; the commu¬ 
nication between it and the spinal chord is cut off: but the 
man lives for a while, and for a long while too, because the 
principle, and the agents, and the functions of organic life, 
whether arising from the lateral column of the spinal chord, or 
from the superior cervical ganglion, are, except by anastomosis, 
independent of the brain. How dreadful must be the state of 
such a being!—he can eat, and digest, and even speak; but he can 
neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor feel. Dr. Todd relates a 
case of this. The patient was shut out from all communication 
with his family and his children, yet his speech and intellects 
were unimpaired. It was, after a while, accidentally discovered 
that a small patch on the right cheek retained its sensibility; 
and, by tracing letters on this spot, his wife and children were 
enabled to maintain some intercourse of ideas with him : at 
length, the palsy began to pervade the system of organic life, 
and he rapidly sunk, and died in a way dreadful to think of. 
Quadruped. — Of this kind of palsy our practice affords us no 
instance ; at least I never saw a case of it. Perhaps we shall 
not find much difficulty in accounting for this, if we consider 
the comparative difference in the bulk of the brain in the human 
being and the quadruped. In man the brain may perhaps be 
averaged at one thirty-fifth part of the weight of his body. In 
the intellectual doo', it can be rated at little more than the one 
hundred and sixtieth part. In the horse it is one four-hundredth 
part only; and in the ox one eight hundred and sixtieth. Sup¬ 
posing, therefore, that the bulk of the spinal chord in the brute 
bore the same proportion to that of the frame generally, we 
could with difficulty believe that this paramount influence—the 
whole function of the spinal chord—could be suspended and 
abolished by any cerebral affection or influence ; at least, the 
occurrence of this must be rare indeed. But it so happens that 
the spinal chord, and especially the inferior or motor surface of 
it, is, compared with the bulk of the animal, very much more 
developed in the quadruped than in the biped. The brain of 
the horse is smaller than that of man ; the spinal chord is consider¬ 
ably larger. The principle of intellect is developed in the 
