8. Appearance of various morbid states of the skin and hair of the neck
and face in animals born of parents having had similar alterations in
the same parts as effects of an injury to the sciatic nerve.”
Romanes, who later went over the same ground, in part under the
immediate direction of Brown-Séquard himself, has made some important
observations in regard to these results, many of which he was able to
confirm.
He did not repeat the experiment of cutting the cord, but he found that,
to produce epilepsy, it was only necessary to cut the sciatic nerve. The
“epileptiform habit” does not appear in the animal until some time after
the operation; it lasts for some weeks or months, and then disappears.
The attacks are not brought on spontaneously, but by “irritating a small
area of the skin behind the ear on the same side of the body as that on
which the sciatic nerve had been divided.” The attack lasts for only a
few minutes, and during it the animal is convulsed and unconscious.
Romanes thinks that the injury to the sciatic nerve, or to the spinal
cord, produces some sort of a change in the cerebral centres, “and that
it is this change—whatever it is, and in whatever part of the brain it
takes place—which causes the remarkable phenomena in question.”
In regard to Brown-Séquard’s statements, made in the 3d and the 4th
paragraphs, in respect to the results of the operation of cutting the
cervical sympathetic, Romanes had not confirmed the results when his
manuscript went to press; but soon afterward, after Romanes’ death, a
note was printed in _Nature_ by Dr. Hill, announcing that two
guinea-pigs from Romanes’ experiment had been born, “both of which
exhibited a well-marked droop of the upper eyelid. These guinea-pigs
were the offspring of a male and female in both of which I had produced
for Dr. Romanes, some months earlier, a droop of the left upper eyelid
by division of the left cervical sympathetic nerve. This result is a
corroboration of the series of Brown-Séquard experiments on the
inheritance of acquired characters.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account