Neither must it be thought that these movements are only to be found in frogs and the lower animals. We shall see that in man also they perform all the most indispensable vital functions without the co-operation of the brain. Fontana, one of the most celebrated Italian physiologists, discovered, as early as the middle of the last century, that one could decapitate rabbits and guinea-pigs without causing their immediate death. And he also found that if care were taken by previously binding the most important arteries; so that the animal should not lose too much blood, and if the respiration were sustained artificially by means of bellows, it could live for some time, and show itself sensitive to external stimuli.[6] [6] Fontana: _Veleno della Vipera_, i. p. 317. IV If we could hear the soliloquies of the man who is writing a book, many, I think, would renounce for ever the pleasure of setting the printing press in motion. It would be a curious experience, if one could read between the lines the tale of discouragement, uncertainty, trouble, and know the repeated struggles by which some difficulty was overcome, a passage was composed, a clause or a sentence written. In scientific works it would be seen that the most frequent interruptions and exclamations arise always from doubt, and the anxiety which torments an author of not making his meaning clear. There is no remedy. He who wishes to explain a scientific subject in a clear and simple way must stop from time to time; he must come out of himself and take his reader’s place, forget all he knows in order to listen impartially to his own voice, and to judge if what he has said may be easily understood. And this I shall do, but the reader must not be repulsed by the first difficulties: our first steps cost the greatest effort. In order to comprehend the physical nature of man, and to know how this exquisite machinery of ours works, we must first examine attentively some of the most important organs which are constantly at work in our nervous system. It is in science as in the study of languages, one must first learn the meaning of the most indispensable words in order to understand what is said to us in the foreign tongue. Till the beginning of this century very confused notions prevailed as to the activity of the brain and spinal cord. Luigi Rolando, the celebrated physiologist of the University of Turin, was the first who clearly showed that the medulla oblongata (that part of the spinal cord which lies nearest the brain) must be regarded as the centre of the whole nervous system. No one in his time knew the structure of the nerve-centres better than he, and it was he who proved that the medulla oblongata 'is the first rudiment of the nervous system, the seat of physical sensibility, of instinct, the director of voluntary movements, the centre of life, and the wonderful cause of most surprising phenomena known under the names of sympathies and consents.’[7]