REVIEW. 
39G 
We confess that we were not a little surprised when we first 
reflected that those who thus mechanically and positively argued 
from experiments on dead horses’ stomachs, for the predetermi¬ 
nation of vital phenomena, have in the same paper loudly in¬ 
veighed against the system of determining the functions of 
living parts from the results of observations on dead ones. 
Admitting the possibility of extreme distention of the horse’s 
stomach, we deny that it in any degree has a mechanical ten¬ 
dency to open the cardia during life. Let any one look at a 
horse’s small stomach, placed beside the enormous quantity of 
food that animal is capable of devouring in a short time, and he 
will be forced to believe that, in perfect health, the organ is 
susceptible of great dilatation, without either involving opening 
of the cardia or impairment of its vital power of contraction. 
To argue that because one part of a hollow viscus is dilated, the 
other must be so likewise, is in opposition to known facts. 
Moreover, my own experiments on dead horses’ stomachs have 
shewn me that not always is extreme distention of the viscus 
with water followed by escape of the fluid through the cardia; 
it is oris not, according to the presence or absence of mechanical 
obstructions. The opening of the cardia, no less than its closure, 
is, in the living animal, doubtlessly owing to vital contraction of 
muscular fibres. 
The reporters found their third proposition on the general 
truth that extreme dilatation of a hollow muscle is attended with 
impairment of its contractile property; thus they make the third 
a necessary sequence of the first proposition. Since we have 
impugned the latter, the former, in our opinion, falls to the 
ground. In asserting that before a horse can vomit the muscular 
coat of the stomach must be paralysed, Mignon, in main part, 
re-echoed the theory of Renault, who several years previously 
had announced, that not only was the muscular action of the 
stomach useless, but opposed to vomiting, which only occurred 
when that viscus became excessively distended. My own ex¬ 
periments, conducted for the purpose of ascertaining the effect 
of injecting a solution of tartar emetic into the veins of the horse, 
force me to look on those of M. Renault with great doubt; for I 
have yet to learn that an experimenter has the power of ex¬ 
citing, at will, efforts to vomit in the horse; and what I have 
seen leads me strongly to suspect, that when, after injecting 
tartar emetic into the veins of a horse and cutting open the 
abdomen, observers have indulged in the belief that they were 
witnessing efforts to vomit, they have only witnessed the violent 
efforts made by tortured brutes in self-defence. 
The theory advocated by Renault and Mignon is, as the latter 
admits, founded on the doctrine first promulgated by Bayle and 
Chirac, and of late rendered notorious by the singular experi- 
