Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and UtilityRomanes, George John
Science
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility
Romanes, George John
Evolution (Biology); Heredity
Although this work was begun over twenty years ago, and then yielded
negative results, it was only within the last decade that I resumed it
more systematically, and under the tutelage of Brown-Séquard himself.
During the last two years, however, the experiments have been so much
interrupted by illness that even now the research is far from complete.
Therefore I will here confine myself to a tabular statement of the
results as far as they have hitherto gone, on the understanding that, in
so far as they are negative or doubtful, I am not yet prepared to
announce them as final.
We may take Brown-Séquard's propositions in his own order, as already
given on page 104.
1st. Appearance of epilepsy in animals born of parents which had
been rendered epileptic by an injury to the spinal cord.
2nd. Appearance of epilepsy also in animals born of parents which
had been rendered epileptic by section of the sciatic nerve.
I did not repeat these experiments with a view to producing epilepsy,
because, as above stated, they had been already and sufficiently
corroborated in this respect. But I repeated many times the experiments
of dividing the sciatic nerve for the purpose of testing the statements
made later on in paragraphs 7 and 8, and observed that it almost always
had the effect of producing epilepsy in the animal thus operated
upon--and this of a peculiar kind, the chief characteristics of which
may here be summarized. The epileptiform habit does not supervene until
some considerable time after the operation; it is then transitory,
lasting only for some weeks or months. While the habit endures the fits
never occur spontaneously, but only as a result of irritating a small
area of skin behind the ear on the same side of the body as that on
which the sciatic nerve had been divided. Effectual irritation may be
either mechanical (such as gentle pinching), electrical, or, though less
certainly, thermal. The area of skin in question, soon after the
epileptiform habit supervenes, and during all the time that it lasts,
swarms with lice of the kind which infest guinea-pigs--i.e. the lice
congregate in this area, on account, I think, of the animal being there
insensitive, and therefore not disturbing its parasites in that
particular spot; otherwise it would presumably throw itself into fits by
scratching that spot. On removing the skin from the area in question, no
kind or degree of irritation supplied to the subjacent tissue has any
effect in producing a fit. A fit never lasts for more than a very few
minutes, during which the animal is unconscious and convulsed, though
not with any great violence. The epileptiform habit is but rarely
transmitted to progeny. Most of these observations are in accordance
with those previously made by Brown-Séquard, and also by others who have
repeated his experiments under this heading. I can have no doubt that
the injury of the sciatic nerve or spinal cord produces a change in some
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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