EXPERIMENTAL  RESCEARCHES
POST-MORTEM  CONTRACTILITY  6f  THE MUSCLES,
OBSERVATIONS ON THE
REFLEX  THEORY.
BENNET DOWLER, M.D.
(REI'RINTED FROM THE NEW YORK JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, FOR MAY.)
         NEW YORK:



R. CRAIGHEAD, PRINTER, 112 FULTON STREET





              1846. 
^ 
/<
          TO PROFESSOR






CHARLES  A.  LEE, M . D .






        AND THROUGH HIM, TO THE







MEDICAL   PROFESSION





      OF THE UNITED STATES,






       THIS  ESSAY





    IS MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, 
 
         EXPERIMENTAL  RESEARCHES

                           ON THE

POST-MORTEM    CONTRACTILITY
                        OF


     THE    MUSCLES;

                       WITH

OBSERVATIONS  ON   THE  REFLEX  THEORY.
 In carrying out the limited aim of this monograph, it is necessary to en-
 ter upon a sterile field, which has been, nevertheless, much cultivated of
 late by some of the most eminent medical philosophers, and, if my labors
 shall lead to results different from theirs, that difference will be stated
 with all due deference and candor, without indulging in a spirit of con-
 troversy unwarranted by the exigencies  of the occasion.   In matters of
 an unsettled or disputable nature, the collision of opinion with opinion, of
 argument with argument, may elicit the  spark  of  truth to guide us into
 the right path.
  Avoiding, as much as possible, all  general observations on the anato-
 my, physiology, and pathology of the Nervous  System, except so far  as
 they stand related to muscular motion and the Reflex Theory, I will  at
 once admit that the Reflex doctrine is ingenious, and has been useful  in
 exciting inquiry, though its claims as a fundamental principle of science
 are, as  I expect to show, altogether visionary.  An entire devotion to the
 truth, in the examination of this subject,  implies neither presumption nor
temerity.
  The  Neologies of the Reflex system, independently of its doctrines, are
 alike puzzling to teacher  and pupil, and foreign to the genius  of both
 ancient and modern lexicons, and will  afford the future historian of me-
 dical literature, curiosities, not to say enigmas—

                 " Words so hard no stone
                   Is hard enough to touch them on."

Afferent and  Efferent; Ingestive,  Egestive,  Centric  and Excentric;
Excito-motor, Motor-excitor, Incident-excitor, Motor primitive fibril, Sen-
                   1 
%
6
sitive primitive fibril, Motor-sensory-grey  matter,  Sensory-grey matter.
Centrifugal and  Centripetal  nervous conductions, Psychical, connate,
Sensori-volitional, Idea-genic, Kinetic, and other kinds  of strata and sub-
strata, with many Reflex changes acting on the histological stratifications,
etc!
   Whether this technology shall  be planted firmly in  our dictionaries,
depends not so much upon the  lexicographers, as upon the soundness of
the doctrines which these terms represent.   In more than one respect,
this is a very  important question.   After the exploration of that immense
mass of concentrated  agony, which has been  drawn  from the sawing,
pinching,  pricking, cutting, burning, electrifying,  and galvanizing  frogs
and other animals—after travelling through the  labyrinthian mazes of
the Reflex Physiology and Pathology,  the student at the denouement is
compelled to say, as in " The Two Gentlemen  of Verona,"

               " How like a dream is this I see and hear  !"        i

   I could name one of the beat works on Physiology,  wherein the Reflex
doctrine, in its various phases in the nervous and muscular systems, oc-
cupies one-sixth of the entire book, requiring more time and difficulty to
get some  notion of it, and then  to unlearn it, than any other part of the
work, as  is usually the case, where the words  are hard, the experiments
equivocal, the doctrines incomprehensible.
   The Medico-Chirurgical Review of 1836 designates the doctrines of
Bell and  Hall as " a burst of discovery as brilliant as it was unexpected,"
and at the same  time explains the  excitomotory or Reflex theory thus:—
" If a stimulus be applied to a part supplied and regulated by the spinal
nerves, the impression  is conveyed by  sentient nerves to the spinal axis,
and the action consequent upon it  is conveyed from  the  spinal axis by
motor nerves  to the original part.   All  this is, to a certain degree, inde-
 pendent of the brain."
   This able  periodical, whose distinguished editor, unfortunately for the
cause of  science,  is now  numbered with  the  dead, has for more than
twenty years upheld this doctrine in all its phases—even the last number
(Oct., 1845)  proclaims it " as the foundation upon which all  accurate
knowledge must  ever repose."   The following extracts are from the
same work :

   " It is at length admitted on all hands that here (in the  spinal cord) impres-
sions do pass, and  necessarily, from the afferent to the efferent fibres.'  ' The
impression (necessary to muscular motion) is conducted to the spinal marrow,
is thence reflected, and again reaches either the  part on  which the impression
took place, or some other part remote  from it,  where the muscular contractions
now take  place'—' in an arched and reflected course, requiring thai the connection
with the spinal marrow be uninjured''—' a throwing  back of  the nervous principle
into the spinal marrow, without at the same time admitting a process similar to
sensation.'  This process is also compared to the '  reflection of light.' "

   To prevent mistakes as to the meaning of authors,  it will be necessary
to give their own words, as briefly as possible, on this topic.  Dr. M.
 Hall, in his work on the Nervous  System, says that he " divided the spi-
nal marrow of a frog below the occiput—-on  pinching  its toes with the
 forceps, the extremities moved," but " on destroying the spinal marrow
 with a probe, they were, on pinching,  motionless."   " The limbs  of an 
7
animal, or a part of an animal, separated from the influence of the cere
brum, become relaxed on destroying the spinaj marrow."  " On with-
drawing gently the  spinal marrow  of a decapitated turtle,  all  motion
ceased.   The limbs were no longer obedient to stimuli, became perfectly
flaccid, having lost all their resilience.  The sphincter  lost its circular
form and  contracted  state,  and  became lax,  flaccid,  and shapeless."
" The presence of the Medulla Oblongata and Spinalis is necessary to  the
contractile function."   " To  irritate  the spinal nerves will produce con-
tractions the very type of tetanus, leaving no doubt of  what particular
part of the nervous system is affected in that disease."  Finally, he con-
cludes, that these " effects have not been hitherto suspected by Physiolo-
gists."
   In an able and  approbatory review of this work (American Jour. Med.
Science, 1839), a summary of Dr. Hall's discovery is thus given : " five
circumstances are required  in  every instance  of an excito-motory act;
an excitant; an excitor nerve, continuous to the nervous centre ; the integ-
rity of that centre: a motor nerve, continuous to  the  muscle to be excited
into contraction ;  and that muscle to  be  endowed with perfect irritability.
If any part of the arc be interrupted, the phenomena  cease  instantly.^
" There can be no better test of the value of these views than the contest
which has arisen, not with regard to their truth, bufc their originality"—
" they have gained ground in despite of all opposition."   " All action is
the result of stimuli to the nerves which proceed to the spinal marrow, pur-
suing a reflex course,"—" By  two lines."  Reflex, convex, complex, and
perplexing routes these, for even  Bell, Hall,  Miiller, Magendie, and both
the Academies Royales !
   The reviewer  refers to a frog, a  turtle, and a lobster  experiment by
Dr. H.  To  make an experiment under the tension of a preconceived
theory, is, too often, but little better than the making of an experiment to
order.   According  to  the reflexians the destruction of any part of  the
cord affects the contractility of a corresponding part of the body and no
more !  This is  what Mr. Canning called drawing on the imagination for
facts.
   In the Philosophical Transactions (1839), Dr. H. advances the same  f
doctrine—" That muscular contraction  is reflex,  curved,—requiring  the
connection with the medulla spinalis to be preserved entire."
   In order to investigate  this subject in a proper manner, that is rigorous-
ly and without bias, it is necessary to forget the great names which stand
committed to the doctrine  of Bell.   Many  years  before his death he
declared   that  " the  reception  of   his  discovery,   concerning  the
different  functions  of  the anterior  and  posterior  roots of  the  nerves,
was  the  reverse  of what  he 'expected,  its  early  announcement
having failed to  draw one  encouraging sentence from  medical men."
(Nerv. Syst., p.  10.)   What a  change !  In January, 1845, when  M.
Castel presented  to  the Royal Academy of Medicine, at  Paris, his work
on the  nervous  system, purporting to be a refutation of  this doctrine of
Bell* {Exposition des altributs du Systeme Nerveux,  refutation de la doc-
  * M.  Bosquet's review of this work in the Gaz. MM. de Paris, might be best
translated by a slight change in Pope's epitaph on Newton, thus :

                 " Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night."

  God said, " Let Castel be !" and all was light: or as M. B.  says, " Sans lui,  tout 
8
trine de Charles Bell, etc.), he was gravely charged with being the only
member of that learned institution who denied this fundamental doctrine
of neurology.   Impartial history teaches us  not to be surprised at any-
thing which  relates to the oscillations  of medical theory.  Dr.  Marshall
Hall, who has lately received  the  well-merited  honor of membership in
the Academy, is more fortunate than Bell, since he sees his reflex doc-
trine flourishing almost everywhere in insular and continental Europe.
   However desirable it may  be  to avoid uttering common-place  homilies
on the nervous  system, it is  necessary to give, briefly as perspicuity will
allow, the views of the most prominent writers on  the subject under con-
sideration.
   The reflex school maintains, not only that the  integrity of the  spinal
cord is indispensable to transmission, but that the division of the anterior
roots is a complete barrier to  muscular motion.  This doctrine is  not based
on the healthy, living body. It is not, with a few  obscure and  unimportant
exceptions, deduced from morbid conditions, but from the last agony, and
more than all, from the recently dead state of the  inferior animals—a kind
of proof by no means satisfactory.
   It should never be forgotten that  experiments on the inferior animals,
as  frogs  and   turtles,  are inconclusive   in  establishing the  com-
plicated  physiology of man.   An  earth-worm  may be  cut  into several
pieces, each  of which  becomes a perfect animal.   The  more the hydra,
are subdivided,  the more is their number increased without loss of vitality.
Could we deduce a vital or reflex theory from such experiments applicable
to man ?   Were capital punishment changed from hanging to vivisection
of the spinal marrow, this would but poorly illustrate the physiology of a
healthy man, or the pathology of a  sick one, yet one such experiment
would be worth a thousand upon frogs.
   I beg  leave to offer an example, not perhaps the most striking, but  the
most convenient, taken from " Blackwood's Magazine," showing  the vital-
ity of the shark (reported in  a work " Fifty days on board a slave  vessel,
in 1843,"  by the Rev. P. G. Grenfell, chaplain on board H.B.M. ship
Cleopatra) :—
  " A shark followed the ship and  was caught. When  brought on deck he exhi-
bited the  usual and remarkable  tenacity of life.  Though the tail was chopped off
and his entrails taken out, in neither of which operations it exhibited any signs of
sensation, yet no sooner  was a bucket of salt water poured on it to wash the deck,
than it began to flounder about  and bite on all sides." »

   Does man ever exhibit such vivid phenomena after evisceration  ?

est gbscuriti, tout est confusion; avec lui, tout se dinoue, tout s'explique, et les
tinibres font place a la lumiere."  M.  Castel delivers himself of his general doc-
trine thus, " La myotilite' exige un plus grand somme de puissance nerveuse  que
la sensibility.   He maintains that the only difference between the anterior and pos-
terior  roots consists  in the different degrees of consistence or density  by which
their conducting power is modified ; that the anterior roots have  more motor force,
because  they are  denser, and, therefore, better galvanic conductors.  Now without
affirming or denying  M. Castel's doctrine, I must protest against  the principle of
building one half physiology and pathology upon the conducting powers of zinc, cop-
per, nerves and muscles.  This superior conduction of the anterior roots may refute
the doctrine of Bell, but still it leaves us in that terra incognita (or terra  nervosa, it
might be  called), where Bell struggled all his life along the frontiers of galvatiism
and vitalism—where reason as well as electricity itself, cast an uncertain  and bewil-
dering light, and where an invisible  barrier arrests the progress of the human facul-
ties.  In  this nebulous realm, this Hades of physiology, the reflex magicians build
their phantasmagorial system. 
9
  Hear Sir Charles Bell, in his great work on the nervous system :—
  " Cold-blooded animals will li\ae without the brain.  Birds, whose heads were
cut off,  Le Gallois  says,  walked,  seemed to feel pain, and moved  their feet
towards the part.   Flourens goes further, since he says, that a bird deprived of
the cerebral lobes dressed its feathers, and ran and leaped."—P. 25.
  Such experiments,  including many  of the author's prickings and cut-
tings of the spinal marrow, can have no satisfactory application toman. The
same may be said of M. Magendie's experiments.* He wishes to know the
functions of certain nerves; he divides them at their origin, plunging a sharp
instrument through both sides ofthe skull at the base of the brain, cutting up
the cerebral matter, and perhaps several other nerves, in order to divide the
fifth ; nay, more, he removes both hemispheres ofthe brain from a duck.
This animal, for eight days after, appeared todo very well, and as he assures
us, possessed the sense  of smell !  Now the question is, does man exhibit
such phenomena  after  the removal of the brain, or the  division  of its
nerves  within the cranium, or the dissection of the anterior and posterior
roots of the spinal nerves ?   Truly, the reflex theory is well named (from,
as I suppose, refecto, to bend or bow back, to  recurve).   Its logic is an-
gular, curved, or circular, as well as the experiments themselves!
   I do not here  wish  to dwell on the equivocal results obtained from arti-
ficial tortures, and artificial diseased conditions of a denaturalizing cha-
racter,  so completely beyond the pale of normal physiology and patholo-
gy, and, withal, based, on experiments difficult to execute, and  repulsive
to the moral sense of the profession ; experiments not likely to be verified
for  these  reasons, though  the  obscurity of the subject  would seem to
require a proportional multiplicity gf observations.
   As illustrative ofthe nature of these experiments, I offer the testimony
of an able champion  of the  reflex  school :—" The  experiments,"  says
the editor ofthe ' Medico-Chirurgical Review,'  " which have been devised
and practised for ascertaining the functions of the nerves, are the most
cruel that can be imagined,  while the results thereby obtained have fre-
quently been unconvincing or uncertain."   This language, repeated from
year to year, gathers strength in the last number of that journal (Oct., 1845),
in which  the  editor denounces vivisections, and  " protests," to  use.  his
own words, "against those barbarous experiments on living animals, the
performance of  which is so disgraceful, upon the whole,  to the medical
profession.  And  what  good have they  done ?—literally none.   We
verily believe that there would have been much more rational views upon
many disputed questions in  physiology, if observation had been exclu-
sively confined  to  noticing the natural and spontaneous phenomena of
life in health and disease, and diligently examining after death the effects
which disease leaves  behind.  Shall we believe that any conclusion worth
knowing  can be  drawn from cutting a poor  animal's heart out of its
body ?  Away with such butcher-like philosophy !"  Subtract these ex-
periments from the reflex theory  and little remains !
  Without at all  derogating  from Sir Charles Bell's, or M. Magendie's,
or Dr. Hall's  claims as discoverers  of the  " anterior roots,"  and reflex
theories built  thereupon,  it may be proper to  add that Haller maintains
the spinal theory of muscular contraction, which, he asserts is rendered
impossible by the  destruction ofthe  spinal cord " {First Lines, ccccii.)."
  * English critics assign to this distinguished physiologist, the second seat of honor
in this department of discovery. 
10
  Beclard says, " That the conditions of muscular action are, the life of
the muscle and its communication with the circulatory and nervous cen-
tre, its integral state, and the action  of an  exciting or stimulating influ-
ence ;" he adds, " That cadaveric rigidity  never takes place so long as
the muscles  possess any galvanic irritability,—(Gen.  Anat.)  Hooper
holds that, " To a certainty no muscular contraction can take place with-
out the immediate  action  of  the  brain and  nerves."—(Diet.  Med.)
Sometimes he  represents contractility as  the  fundamental  property of
vitality, and even as  its cause.   In  a late  and learned  work on Physio-
logical Anatomy and  Physiology, by Messrs. Todd & Bowman,  the
reflex  theory  appears  as a  fundamental  truth;  " The antero-lateral
columns  of the  cord, with the anterior and  posterior forms ofthe grey
matter, are the effective centres of motion and sensation to the trunk and
extremities."
  Sir Charles Bell sums up his researches upon this subject, by saying,
" These opinions and experiments have been followed up to the satisfac-
tion of all Europe.  It has been acknowledged that the anterior roots of
the spinal nerves bestow the power of muscular motion and the posterior
sensibility."—(Anat.)   A discovery  which Dr. M. Hall designates " as
the most  splendid in physiology within the last century."—(Diag.)
   Professor Carpenter, of England   (who  considers  the  spinal mar-
row as not only independent  of  the brain,  but as  frequently opposed
to it in action), when speaking of the biceps muscle, says, " That the only
way to excite the whole muscle into contraction at once, is to stimulate
it through its  nerves."—{Phys.)   Many other authors flatly  deny the
possibility  of exciting contractions when the nerves leading to the mus-
cles in the recently  dead body are divided.    " The power of determining
individual muscular action  involves of necessity the agency of insulated,
that is, independent conductors."—(Med. Chir.Rev., Oct., 1845.)
   Before entering  upon the  validity  of these assumptions it may  be
proper to state that the circle of the reflex function is rapidly extending
from the spinal marrow to the  brain,  where the phrenologists find  it very
useful in explaining the developments.  Geo. Combe, Esq., infers, " that
from the anterior lobes of the brain,  the seat of the intellectual faculties,
there must be medullary fibres communicating with the motor portion of
the spinal cord." Professor Reid, after saying " that the  true excito-
motory movements do not require the presence of the cerebrum for their
manifestation," adds, "All modem physiologists agree that when emotions
are excited in the mind, a reflex and motive  influence is sent downwards
along the motiferous column, and along the motor  nerves, to the muscles
thrown into contraction."  Dr. Laycock carries the  reflex doctr'ne fur-
ther, and to make  it  the  basis of all  mental science,  " All incident
excitor impressions have to complete a circle through the central ganglia
ofthe cerebro-spinal axis,"—"exciting ideagenic and kientic substrata,
and the  organs of intellect, and the desire for medical  skill and other
phenomena of reason and volition ; the deepest feelings of religion,  patriot-
ism and  honor ; the love and pursuit of truth ; the  avoidance of evil, and
all moral incentives  to  actions whatsoever,"—" which  have substrata
upon which incident excitor impressions impinge, and from which motor
impulses  may  be derived.   The impulse in  traversing the ideagenic
substrata changes the other substrata,.in a series  ; sensations and ideas
arise, and new  substrata are  formed ;  psychical  substrata  are  formed
according to the division ofthe grey  matter.  The energy ofthe muscu- 
11
lar act, will depend upon the excitability of the grey matter at the point of
reflex cerebral action and upon the extent of affinities between the impinging
impression and the recipient substrata.   The size and motor force  of an
organ  will  be  in proportion to the number and  strength or quality of
its ideagenic substrata."   Dr. L. speaks of these strata  as being  dislo-
cated!—(Vide Land. Lancet, Aug., 1845.)  The language, the doctrines,
and the complex apparatus concerned in this reflex explanation, are alike
incomprehensible and suspicious.
   This jargon daily increases, though, as yet, it is chiefly  endemic
to Europe.*  Everything is becoming  reflex, not excepting generation !
We read of reflex nutrition, reflex development, reflex remedies; strych-
nia travels along the motoriferous tract, while morphia takes up the line
of march along the sensiferous.  This great double railway the phreno-
logists, as  above-mentioned,  have  ably extended to the encephalon,
where it would seem the terminus is to  be located, among the psychical
strata  and  substrata.  In plain English, the brain, composed as it is of
albumen,  phosphorus, water, &c, becomes  afferent, efferent,  reflex, and
if need be, perhaps,  circular too.
   Not content that the  anterior roots shall  preside over  motion and the
posterior over sensation, according to  Bell and Magendie ;  not content
with Dr. Hall's addition, which is supposed  to  explain these functions,
the advocates of this doctrine threaten to absorb much of  physiology and
pathology, together  with  the whole of mental science.   Dr.  Laycock
says (London Lancet, Sept.,  1845), no mental phenomena whatever are
exempt from the la,ws of reflex action.  By the term psychical substra-
tum, I mean a material  substratum—a definite arrangement  of matter,
dec. ;  contractility " in  a  decapitated  frog"  (The frog ! the frog  !)  " is
excited by a substratum in the spinal ganglia."   To dwell in this region
of mental geology, among  the "psychical strata possessing a definite
material arrangej/ieni" (mark it! the mind material! indefinite strata, like
the coats  of an onion !) is foreign to our present purpose.
   The theory of muscular contractility connects itself with sundry vital,
chemical, and electrical speculations, which, if not more justly  founded,
possess a  wider range  than  the  anterior  roots  of  the spinal  column.
BichaL like Abernethy,  refers contractility to  life alone ; to  have  life is
the only condition necessary to muscular contraction, which latter is the
effect of an active vitality.—(Researches on Life and Death.)   Professor
Draper, of New York, in his beautiful  work on the chemistry of plants,
denies a vital force per se, while Broussais regards contractility  as a funda-
mental property of life, if not life itself; even sensibility is, according to him,
one  of the results  of contractile  movements.—(Path.,  104 and 64.)
Professor Harrison,  of New Orleans, explains  muscular motion and  life
also,asehemieal actions : " From  some unknown combination of circum-
stances that occurred in  lost geological eras, carbon  united with water,
organic matter  was formed  from  inorganic, and life commenced."—
(Nerv. Syst.,  p.  200.)   It will be seen in the sequel,, whether  non-vital
and chemical theories will explain all.  '
   The electric theory  of life  and  contractility  has, in  a great degree,
overshadowed all others. Professor H. M. Edwards, says,  " Electric cur-
  * Dr. Gregory, in his beautiful Introductory Lecture (Oct. 1, 1845—Med. Times),
says, " The functions of the nervous system, direct and reflex, are now slowly deve-
loping themselves." 
12
rents act upon the muscles in the same manner as the nervous influence,
and which it plausibly explains."—(Anat. and Phys.)  Indeed, Dr. W.
Philip  says these fluids  are identical, while  M. Matteucci, in his late
prize  essay on this subject, wholly denies the existence of these electric
fluids or currents in the nerves, and maintains that  all electrical actions
in the body, are not the causes but effects of vital changes.  According
to M. De Manneville (Precis, etc.), and Dr. Searle (London Lancet), life
is but the sum of electricity.   Dr. S.  Dickson, of London, asserts, that
" Life is electricity in its highest sense, it produces all the changes in the
living body, the brain and nervous system being the electric apparatus ;
the nerves,  the  moving powers.  A  remedy is a repulsive or attractive
force, and acts by an electric vital  affinity  solely."  But, according  to
him,  " Medicina non agit in cadaver."   " Bark is a motive power."   It
might  be urged that the  motive power in  post-mortem  contractility is
quicker than bark, and slower than electricity.
   Haller was aware of the influence  ofthe spinal cord of certain animals
over the muscles, when under galvanic excitation, or when pricked with
a  sharp  knife, though he does not refer to  the posterior roots.—(Phys.,
cccciii.)
   I know not that the spinal marrow in the human subject has ever been
tested in the living state,  by pricking or scratching ; and, as to exciting
contractions  in  this manner in the dead body, credat Judceus !  In the
examination of the spinal cord of many subjects, only a few minutes after
death, not a case of contraction was seen, though, in  the ordinary method
of cuttings chiselling, and sawing on each side of the spinous processes
of the vertebrae, all the roots of the  spinal  nerves, as they escape from
the bony canal, must be  irritated in  every possible way by pricking,
scratching, bruising, pinching and dividing.  Haller, and, I believe, all
the electricians who have  since his day experimented on this matter,
constantly speak of convulsions being produced in the muscles.   Now, a
quivering, oscillating, agitated, irregular, or convulsed motion, is very
different  from regular intermitting  extensions, pronations, supinations,
which, in truth, simulate  voluntary  movements; of which we will say
more hereafter.
   The " Medico-ChirurgiCal Review"  gives the following account ofthe
recent experiments of MM. Longet and  Matteucci,  who describe the
effects of electricity on  the posterior or  sensitive roots of the spinal
cord :—

   " When these  were separated from the  cord, no contractions were excited  by
the electrical current, whatever its direction.  But when they were still adherent
to the medulla, they always gave rise to  convulsive shocks on closure of the cir-
cuit, whether the current was inverse or direct. It was  evident, however, that
these convulsions were owing entirely to  a reflex  action on  the anterior roots;
for, when the latter were cut across, all contractions instantly ceased.  An inte-
resting point,  which  their  researches  have elucidated,  is  the function of the
anterior columns of the spinal cord, which are shown to  possess an exclusively
motor function."

   I find, on referring to the transactions of the Academy, that  M. Mat-
teucci's  paper on  " Galvanic muscular currents" (sur les courans gal-
vaniques musculaires), is  founded on observations upon frogs continued
from day to day for five months. These  frogs were all taken from the same
pond ; some were killed to ascertain the contractile function—(jpour  en
i 
13
mesurer le courant musculaire); others were exposed to different tempera-
tures and gases.   His grand conclusion from the whole is, that the mus-
cular current is proportioned to the activity ofthe respiration ! At best, this
is only a  piece of frog  physiology, that  may not have  anything to do,
with human physiology.   Nothing in the history of fashion can be more
extraordinary than the penchant of physiologists for that ugly, amphibious
animal, the frog, so unlike man in  its structure,  respiration, circulation,
temperature, and maladies ; yet it seems to be the type for all things con-
cerning   human  beings,  not   excepting  inflammation  and  muscular
contraction.  Why not include gout, consumption, cholera, and mesmer-
ism ?  The sacred Ibis was  never so  honored  by the Egyptians as is
this ranine amphibium, by the savans  of our day.  As this great  idol of
experimenters  is capable  of living at the bottom of a  frozen pond  or
lake during half the year",  and may  be skinned, nay,  decapitated without
losing the power of locomotion for a considerable time ; it must be admit-
ted that its vital versatility is well adapted to prove almost  anything, espe-
cially when aided by a few assumptions and manipulations of a galvano-
neurological character!
   The sequel will  show the infinite superiority of the motor power of a
slight  blow with  the operator's hand, compared with all this mummery of
electrical batteries, with the anterior  roots of the spinal marrow of the
dead and   dying  frogs.   Will any candid man  pretend that the  convul-
sions excited among the muscles by such an overpowering agent as elec-
tricity, which shivers in an instant the mightiest oak ofthe forest, are at
all like those repeated,  intermitting, deliberate, lifelike  flexions, exten-
sions,  pronations, and supinations, not complicated with horrible vivisec-
tions  as  described in  the  following  pages ?  Is  it  warrantable,  is it
praiseworthy to resort to the very  worst kind of proof in preference to
the very best, to complicate that which  is simple, and to reason reflexively
instead of directly ?
   Bichat  could  not excite contractions  of  the  heart, nor of the other*
organs of organic life, by electricity, though  he  experimented upon cri-
minals freshly  decapitated,  the most favorable  subjects imaginable !  In
subjects but a few minutes dead from  fevers and other maladies, blows,
pressure,  scratches, and pricks, are equally powerless in exciting these
very organs, which, in the language of Haller,  " are  exceedingly tena-
cious  of  their  vis insita" (ccccii.).   Where is the  proof  that  gal-
vanic electricity  has ever caused the regular systole and  diastole of the
heart, or the peristaltic movements  of the intestines, even in the inferior
animals simulating  physiological, action 1   Far from being identical with,
is it not opposed  to life ?   The heart  of some of^the inferior animals
when  removed  from the body acts somewhat in its physiological charac-
ter as  an  involuntary muscle for a long  period, without a galvanic bat-
tery, and  without "acrimonious"  agents, as Haller would  say,  blood,
water, or  air alone being necessary.                               v
  Passing by John Hunter's assertion, " that  the  muscle  can as little
relax as it can  contract after death," we come again  to the vis insita of
the illustrious Haller ; an assumption or hypothesis which the researches
of nearly   a century  have not  surpassed for ingenuity.   " The  vis
insita  is," according  to  him, " peculiar to life, and  the first few hours
after death (First Lines Phy*., cccc.) ; it may be  excited (it is Haller
who speaks) by a sharp instrument, and in  the hollow muscles  by air,
water,  and every kind of acrimony,  but most powerfully  by  electricity ; 
14
it is peculiarly  active in the heart, stomach, and bowels."—(ccccii.)   It
is, I repeat, not a little remarkable,  that  these are. the very organs in
which Bichat never could excite any  motion whatever by galvanic elec-
tricity.   During  the  Reign  of Terror the  guillotined were delivered to
him by  the  authorities, in from 30 to 40 minutes after execution ;  yet(
he declares that in some every kind of mobility was extinct, and that in
none could the  organs of organic life be excited.   He, therefore, con-
cludes,  " that with respect to galvanic phenomena,  as  in all others, there
is a wide difference between the muscles of animal  and those of organic
life."—(Res. on  Life and Death.)   A conclusion which  all my experi-
ments ,in  percussion  seem  to  confirm.   In the human subject, I  have,
frequently,  in a few minutes  after death,  compressed the  heart in situ
with the hand for a  moment, and then relaxing and  compressing alter-
nately,  but  always without producing any motions analogous to that con-
cerned in the circulation.   I do not consider that the salient but delicate
ridge or elevation in  the  tract of a scratch or prick as possessing this
character. This view is deemed very important.  The  muscular fibres of
the heart  belong, in this respect, to the muscles of animal life, a distinc-
tion that hasnot been adverted to even by Bichat, nor others, so far as I recol-
lect.  The  heart, in  its great leading  function  as a muscle  of organic
life, cannot, strictly speaking, so far as I have seen, be made  to contract
by a  blow or a prick, though I cannot speak of frogs.   When the  wavy
line which rises  from a scratch is called a contraction of  the heart,  the
reader is almost sure  to receive a wrong impression.   The  "signal  ex-
periment made with the scratch of a  needle in the heart by Dr. Fordyce,"
quoted  by Dr.  Dunglison, in his valuable work on physiology, should be
understood as causing contractions ofthe muscular tissue at the point of
contact only.  In this case, however,  the meaning  is scarcely  ambi-
guous.
  Haller's experiments,  without doubt, were  made on the inferior ani-
mals  ; Bichat's were made  on man; so were mine.   In  many  robust
individuals, opened in less than half the time  after death  designated by
Bichat, I have never seen a fact which in  the remotest degree confirm-
ed Haller's doctrine,  namely, that the vis insita is peculiarly active in
the heart, stomach and bowels.   In not a few  of these subjects, I have
the best reason  for supposing  that  the capillary  circulation was  still
active.   The functional contractility  of the  human  heart, the vis insita of
Haller, is believed  to be visionary in the cadaver, though this organ is
susceptible  to the contraction which I have  described.
   Whether these experiments be of  any value or not,  I trust that candid
men will  not estimate them the less when  I say that they were  made,
not to  order, but rather incidentally, while  engaged  in pathological
inquiries  which occupied my attention almost entirely.  For  nearly  two
years after I first noticed post-mortem  muscular contractility, I seldom
thought of its  special application to  the reflex theory.  I  viewed it as a
curious, and, so far  as I knew, an original  observation.  During an
attempt to  produce contusions  on the  recently dead  body, I happened
to select  a  spot over the middle  of the biceps ; a blow there (the arm
having been extended on the  floor)  caused the subject to  slap his hand
against his  face with much force.  I  was  almost as  much surprised as
was a black man that  1  hired to aid me in a private dissection,  in St.
John  the  Baptist street,  in 1842,  of the body  of a gentleman of much
travel,  who died  of remittent fever.   Previous to this dissection,  which 
15
 was two hours after death, I  struck the arm  with the inferior edge
 of my  extended hand.   The subject contracted his arm, carrying his
 hand to his  breast.   My aid looked  to the door, which had  been closed
 beforehand, and begged to be let out  without delay.
    It was, therefore, very recently that I began to regard contraction thus
 excited in its most elementary character, as an important point of depar-
 ture in the analysis of some of the most interesting problems  in physiolo-
 gy,&c.  It cannot be repeated too often, that the simplicity of a method is a
m great recommendation, while complexity gives rise to suspicion when an
 explanation is offered, and  at the  same  time, increases the chances of
 error.    Professor Liebig has said with much force,  that " if a method of
 investigation  bear in any  degree  the stamp of perfection, the result
 may always be given in  a few*words ; but these few words are eternal
 truths."
    I take for granted, until the contrary is established by experiment, that
 the reader will admit as true the  facts set forth in this monograph.   It
 may be asked, however, whether these facts are new ?  I know that cer-
 tain men declare that there is nothing new in medical science. * Let such
 read Jeremy Bentham.*
    What does Sir Charles  Bell say of the muscular motions  which he excit-
 ed, and upon which, he, more than^on anything else, founds his great dis-
 covery—if such it be ?  I say nothing of the kind of animals  upon which
 he experimented ;  nothing about his  knocking them half dead by blows
 on the occiput;  nothing of  the  complex and  uncertain character of a
 dissection of the spinal cord  of an animal which might have been dead or
 alive, for aught we know.   His own account shows what kind  of con-
 tractions his experiments produced.   In his work on the nervous system,
 he quotes  with approval, M.  C. Hawkins's account of these experiments,
 " which," as  he says, " show that when the anterior roots were pinched
 by the forceps, or pricked by the scissors, an evident motion was produc-
 ed, perceptible to the eye ;"  he even goes on to insist that this was some-
 thing more than " the slight tremulous motion from the natural irritabi-
 lity still  remaining in the muscles."  It is most evident that he never
 dreamt of regular, periodical  flexions  and extensions of entire limbs load-
 ed down with  heavy  weights.   His  experimentum crucis  on the  motor
  * " Wisdom of ancestors," says Bentham, " is a Chinese argument.  The reigning
prejudice in favor ofthe dead lies not very deep—a dead man has no rivals—to no-
body is he an object of envy,—in whosesoever way he may have stood when living
when dead he no longer stands in anybody's way.  If he was a man of genius, those
who denied him  any merit during his life,  even  his very enemies.^ changing their
tune all at once, assume an air of justice ami kindness which costs them nothing,
and enables them under pretence of  respect for the dead to gratify malignity to the
living.  Another class habitually exalts the past for the purpose of depressing and
discouraging the present generation." " You may turn over whole volumes of anti-
quity without discovering a solitary truth to make amends for your painf.  For ten
propositions evidently false, and ten times  the number of unintelligible ones, you
will scarcely find  a single one that is true.   A preference for the ancients is a most
pernicious prejudice, reversing the whole order of nature. The acorn must be larger
than the oak it will become.  A man must be wiser in his mother's womb, than in
the vigor of manhood.  Everything must grow backwards. New experiments added
to the subsisting stock must lessen the  number. It is scarcely possible to believe a
man to stand bona fide on so noxious a system.  IPhe do, grieve over him, but treat
him as an enemy to knowledge and to that happiness which is founded upon know-
ledge.  The public interests require  that his notions rise not  into credit."—Jew-
tkam's Book of Fallacies ; Deontology. 
I
                                  16

roots caused a motion "merely perceptible to the eye."   This was the
ne plus ultra of that muscular contraction which he could excite by prick-
ing and pinching,  under  circumstances  presenting the  maximum  of
uncertainty.*
   Has muscular contraction, by the percussional method, ever been point-
ed out by authors ?  Have they noted contractions without any shorten-
ing of the muscle,  though accompanied with an enormous  augmentation
of volume and density at the points of contact ?   Have they ascertained,
fixed, and made known the laws of muscular action, as developed by this
most  definite and simple of all methods, divested as it is of volition and
all psychological phenomena ?   Have they described  a case of complete
motion of the whole limb, not only including flexion, but extension, pro-
nation, supination,—in a word, all the elementary, physiological actions,
simulating the voluntary movements, though less varied and more slow;
but, more  than all,  have they  illustrated  the great law  of contractile
periodicity,  excited per se, in a manner very different from the unmean-
ing convulsions of electrical  action,—from the  unmeaning action of a
" scratch* or  prick with  a  sharp instrument?"—I say unmeaning, be-
cause no definite actions  are produced resembling those called physiolo-
gical.   The use of the phrase "sharp instrument,"  from  Haller's time
to the present,  speaks volumes in f%vor of my position,—for  a dull in-
strument, as a shingle, cane, the  flat side of a hatchet, or the  operator's
hand,  is  infinitely  better,  because it  moves the  entire  limb,  whereas,
a scratch causes nothing of the kind, giving rise to nothing  but a delicate
ridge, or line, like a thread, in any direction across a  muscle, diagonally,
triangularly,  or in curves, as the case may be.
   It is not,  then, the silence of authors upon which the greatest reliance
is to  be placed, in  claiming  for  this method of investigating  muscular
contraction, something of originality.  All writers, so far as recollected,
especially writers  on Medical Jurisprudence, in  treating of the signs of
the certainty  of death, rely much on muscular contraction,  or as I  should
say, on its  absence, as the  most  indubitable sort of proof.  During the
present year, M. Cadet De Grassicourt, a French  writer, proposed,  as
the best method of ascertaining the reality of the supposed death, to dis-
sect down to the muscles and  prick them—a common recommendation
in such cases,—" As if a man be dissected  to see what  part was  disaf-
fected," and this, perhaps,  during his lifetime !  (I regret that I cannot
stop here to  examine  into the fallacy of  this test, which would  go  to
prove the absence  of real death, or the possibility of resuscitation after
  * Few foreign authors have be.en so much venerated among Americans as C. Bell,
though this discovery, so called, contributed little to this end ; so of Dr. Hall.  To
speak of one so estimable as Bell, who has instructed  and delighted us all, in any
other way #ian than that of eulogy, may not be without some risk of giving offence
now that he is numbered with the dead, while his doctrine on which he spent much
of his life is in the ascendant.  In a communication in the  " Med. Chir  Rev.," Jan.,
1834, relating to M. Muller's experiments, confirmatory of  Sir Charles' discovery, he
even labors to depreciate experiments, and  prefers " to build on anatomy"—prefers
" the  vital powers to the galvanic conducting powers of *he nerve."   Now, all this
may be very true, but is very fatal to his own experiments, since mere anatomy ex-
plains nothing of the supposed functions of the roots, anterior or posterior.  Ft is not
so surpristng that this doctrine,  so founded,  "was not received," as he himself
assures us, " with some show of interest."  Its present success is still more puz-
zling. 
17
the removal ofthe brain, spinal marrow, the viscera ofthe chest and ab-
domen, and the amputation of the limbs, at from six to eight or fourteen
hours after death !)   Now, as  percussion  is the only perfect and safe
method of exciting contractions, I cannot  suppose that  there is a single
medical  man, who, knowing this, would  lay bare, by a surgical opera-
tion, the  muscles of a person supposed to  be possibly alive, in order to
apply a test of little or no value, when one of the greatest value  could
be commanded by a simple blow ofthe inferior edge ofthe operator's ex-
tended hand, insufficient in force to injure a living person.   Here, as in
law, the rule should be that the best evidence ought to be procured.
   During the last ten years, many  French  authors, candidates for the
prize founded  by Professor  Manni,  of the  University  of Rome,  to  be
awarded  by the  French Academy of Sciences,  have written ably upon
the signs of apparent  and absolute death, with a view to prevent prema-
ture  interment, etc.   In this question, which is still open and undecided,
 much importance is constantly attached to contractility, or rather to its
absence,  requiring a dissection in order  to expose  the muscles for  this
test!  It is, in fact, a fundamental point which is made paramount to all
other signs of death anterior to  putrefaction.   The celebrated  " Nysten
recommends this as a certain criterion of death—to lay bare the muscle
and prick it, or apply  the galvanic or electric fluid."  (Prof Guy's Med.
 Juris., by Prof. Lee, 1845, p.  372, et seq.*)   These, though  negative
 proofs,  are nevertheless sufficient  to  show that the  method  1  have
 adopted to excite muscular contraction is wholly unknown, or absurdly
 rejected.   Why should a very simple matter (I ask once more) be thus
 complicated by  galvanic experiments, dissections, and reflex logic, see-
 ing that a blow direct with the  hand will produce  results more definite,
 more like the acts of vitality and volition ?   If an arm, from six to four-
 teen hours after death—hours after the dissection of the body, and after
 being severed from the trunk at the shoulder-joint, contract with the ut-
 most precision, how  can gentlemen say " that  the  anterior columns of
 the spinal cord possess an exclusive motor function" ?   Whatever agency
 these roots may have when galvanized, they are incomparably inferior
 to the motor power of the muscle when excited by the hand, the hatchet,
 or a cane.   A hand, or a hatchet, or a cane-theory, ought to have  the
 preference over the  reflex  theory, as the  former  is  not  only the most
 simple,  but the  most  scientific, affording a nearer approximation  to  the
 known physiological  functions of man.   Of this, the sequel will afford
 evidence—evidence  which was scarcely sought  for, but  which came of
 itself, incidentally—evidence,  simple, plain, and direct, and  not obtained
 under the tension of any theory whatever.
    My experiments, though very numerous,  might have been multiplied
 threefold  ; they are  already  sufficiently  unwieldy, and do not easily
 admit of  analysis.   I will, therefore, give a few cases taken almost at
 random, as fpund among  several  thousand  folio  MS. pages, nearly all
 being yellow feVedRubjects, which are incomparably the best for study-
  * This work contains an enumeration ofthe signs of death, which, with the other
topics treated of, are more clearly and compendiously stated, than in any work I
have seen from the foreign press.  Dr. T. E.  Beatty  (Cyc. Prac. Med.) maintains
that " Galvanism is the best test ofthe reality of death ; for, if the muscular fibre do
not obey it, there can be no doubt that vitality is extinguished."  Galvanic contrac-
tion is no prqgf of the presence of life, or ofthe possibility of resuscitation. 
18
ing post-mortem contractility.   It  is more than probable that my most
striking cases are omitted, as, at the time of making the observations, I
did not fully appreciate their  importance.   I have omitted all cases not
particularly described, that is, such as were mentioned in such general
terms, as " contractile,"  " contraction active,"  " strong contractility" &c.
This I now 'regret, as well as the omission of  many experiments which
I could name, but  most of all, such as might illustrate the  almost incre-.
dible doctrine  of counter-contraction,  which, in despite of my notes, I
would like to reconfirm upon a larger scale.

Miscellaneous cases illustrative of the general phenomena of post-mortem
                          Contractility :—

  Case I.—0. D.,  an Englishman, aged 26.   From fifteen minutes to
several hours after death,  raised his  fore-arm to the perpendicular as
often  as its flexors were  struck ;  the motion  was  slow, the  ratio  of
contraction and  relaxation appeared uniform,  occupying about half a
minute.
  Case II.—E.  M., an Englishman, aged 37.   At thirty minutes  after
death, afforded similar results.  The experiments  were often repeated,
at prolonged periods ; the contractions and  relaxations were supposed to
occupy about 30 seconds each.   The  flexion ceased at the perpendicu-
lar in  every instance.  When the  experiments ceased, the muscular
force continued at its  maximum, having lost nothing.
  Case III.—O. S., an Englishman, aged 27.   Like the last.
  Case IV.—W. O.,  an Englishman,  aged 27.  Dead five hours;  neck
moderately stiff; brain,  93° ; epigastrium, 100° ; chest, 93° ; thigh,
99°.  '£he arms strongly contractile,  but the motion was slow and uni-
form,  requiring several seconds to produce  flexion and relaxation.
  Case V.—H.  O., a German,  aged 32.  Presented one  hour  after
death active muscular contractions ofthe arms, which soon disappeared
after a few blows,  the neck being stiff; other parts flexible.
  Case VI.—J.  Q., a German, aged 24.   Fifteen minutes to one  hour
after death, everywhere flexible ; powerful  muscular contractions ; the
neck became stiff; the legs and arms soon after.
  Case VII.—S. G.,  a New Yorker, aged  22.   Precisely like  the last
case.
  Case VIII.—J.  M., a  Virginian, aged 31.  Like the last.
  Case IX.—J.  R., a Marylander, aged  25.   Was observed  for one
hour after  death,  during  which time the biceps at intervals contracted
vigorously.
  Case X.—D.  H., a German, aged 22.   For  more than an hour  after
death,  carried his  hand to his  nipple as  often as the  extensors  were
struck—the jaws being rigid ;  109° to 106°, for two hours.
  Case XI.—Miss S., aged 26.  An hour  after death presented slight
rigidity ofthe arm ; one was extended ; a blow causal it to rise quickly
to the  perpendicular,  from which  it slowly returned^ requiring many
seconds, perhaps a minute or two.   Three  similar  operations destroyed
the contractility.   The fingers soon became stiff, then the arms, next the
legs, but the neck was limber for three  hours.  The heat generally
107°r descended in the axilla, at four hours  after death, to 103*°.
  Case XII.—F. L., a Frenchman, aged 58.   Dead about  one hour;
heat 107|° to 103° ; possessed the contractile  function stroagly, carry- 
19
ing the hand to the breast; also performing pronation and  supination
according to the percussion.  The abdominal muscles were rigid.
  Case XIII.—This subject had been dead two hours; he lifted his arm
quickly and often, several feet from the table, sometimes striking himself
in the face with force.
  Case XIV.—J. A., an Irishman, aged  39.  Dead three to four hours ;
heat 107° to 103° ; neck very rigid ; arms highly contractile.
   Case XV.—J.  G:, a Baltimorean, aged 24.   An hour after  death,
like the last; 108°.
   Case XVI.—J. P.,  a Scotchman, aged 22.   Dead  one hour  and a
half; raised his fore-arm perpendicularly twice.
   Case XVII.—R. C,  a Kentuckian)  aged  25.   In two hours after
death, when the arm was extended to an  angle  of 45° from  the  trunk,
and was struck with my hand, or still better, with the side of the hatchet,
carried his  hand  to his epigastrium ; but  when  the  arm  was extended
upon the floor, so as to form a right angle with the body, he slapped him-
self upon the mouth and nose.   The contractility began to  decline  in
the third hour, and by the fourth hour all motions of the  limbs  ceased,
though the pectoral muscles  assumed the ridgy  or lumpy form when
percussed.   An hour after death the thigh was moderately contractile.
The leg  hung down  near the floor;  its flexors,  after being  struck,
 drew up the heel against the buttock.  Heat for seven hours, from 111°
to  102°.   Five hours after death contractility ceased,  and rigidity pre-
 vailed.
    Case XVIII.—J. H., a Virginian, aged 30.   Bled enormously, and
 cupped much ; dead a few minutes ; had contractility less than a quar-
 ter of an hour;  dragged a hatchet  along the  floor, not being able to
 raise it.   The heat, which was usually low,  continued  as long as ob-
 served, that is one hour and a quarter, without varying materially, not
 exceeding  102^°.
    Case XIX.—;N. E.,  an Italian,  aged 25.   Dead  about one  hour;
 heat 107° to 106° ; recti muscles had contracted into indurated masses
 like knots of wood ; neck rigid; the arm raised a weight, say 2  to 3lbs.
 fastened in the palm, carrying the hand  to the umbilicus several  times.
    Case XX.—Remittent.—Mr.  S., aged 45.   Dead  two hours;  legs be-
 coming rigid ; struck the flexors of the arm with the inferior edge of my
 hand ; the cadaver raised his arm with a regular, slow movement,  placing
 his hand upon his breast: as soon as  the muscles  relaxed, he  carried
 his arm back,  extending the same.  The experiment was repeated three
 or four times, when the arm fell back  exhausted.  The blows were now
 made with a piece of wood.   The. biceps gathered up  into a lurrrp, at the
 place where the  blow was given, but failed to move  the fore-arm.
    Without attempting to give all the details of post-mortem contractility,
 it may be necessary to enumerate a few of its leading features.
    Beclard asserts that the most remarkable and  best established fact  in
 the muscular action is, the shortening of the muscle during contraction;
 that its swelling  is caused by its shortening, each compensating the other
 mutually.—Gen. Anat.
    It is natural to every muscle, says Haller, to shorten itself, by  retract-
 ing its extremities towards its belly  or middle ; when in action, becoming
 shorter and thicker (cccci.).  Whether  this doctrine be true of galvanic
 muscular contraction, I do not know,  but I am certain  that it does not
 apply  to  post-mortem contraction,—because it often  happens  that both 
20
the fore-arm and elbow-joint are  stiff and immovable, while the biceps
may be powerfully contractile, its belly swelling up into a  hard lump;
relaxing and  contracting repeatedly,  and  unavailingly, owing to the
rigidity at and below its insertion in the arm.  Here, it is evident that the
indurated swelling is not owing to the approximation of the two extremi-
ties ofthe muscle, for they are fixed.   The  increase of volume seems to
be owing to an expansion with rigidity among its  elementary fibres ; a
zigzag oscillatory motion upon the summits of the contracting masses is
visible to the naked eye.   Much evidence might be produced besides the
following:

Cases of Post-Mortem Muscular Contraction  xoithoul shortening in yellow
                           fever Subjects.
  Case XXI.—H. F., a German, aged 28.  Dead four hours,  and dis-
sected.  The fingers and toes flexed and rigid ; the biceps and gastrocne-
mius contracted, but without causing motions,  as the limbs were rigid at
their extremities.
  Case XXII.—R. P., an Irishman, aged 24.  Dead ten hours ;  fore-arm
rigid ;  the biceps contracted strongly,  but the rigidity  in  and below the
elbow-joint prevented flexion.   Blows with the knuckles over the pecto-
ral  muscles caused them to heave  up into knotty masses.
  Sometimes,  post-mortem rigidity sets in during the paroxysm of contrac-
tion, producing a very singular phenomenon, a hard mass, which,  con-
tinuing for hours, feels like bone.  I have known this to be mistaken for
a fracture badly set, or for a bony tumor.
  Case XXIII.—J. C, an Irishman, aged 26.   From one to three hours
after death, the arms performed complete flexions and extensions ;  heat
from 109° to 102° ;  six hours after death, the arms  could  not  be ex-
tended without cutting the muscles, which were indurated and  elevated
at the site of the  blows,  having assumed  the  same  arrangement as at
the maximum  of contraction.

Cases illustrative of the Increase, Declination, and subsequent Resuscitation
   of Post-Mortem Contractility ; all being yellow fever except the last.

  Case XXIV.—From four to five  hours  after  death,  and two hours
after dissection, and  the removal ofthe entire  viscera, the cadaver being
warm and rigid, great force was found necessary to extend the  arm to a
right angle with the body—extensions, flexions, and frictions were used,
after which, a blow caused the fore-arm to rise until the hand pointed to
the zenith ; the motion was slow and equable ; a  second  blow caused a
slight motion without elevating the arm.
 ■ Case XXV.—A. G. G., a New Yorker, aged 30.   In  a few  minutes
after death, presented but feeble  contractions,  which, in  half  an  hour
ceased  for a  time.   But soon after the contractile function returned to
the same arm  with much force, but after repeated blows it was exhausted
a second time. Again, after a similar interval, it returned  with a like
force a third time.  In three hours the rigidity, beginning in the neck,
extended itself to most parts of the cadaver.  The  blows  were  found to
have caused well-marked contusions, cellular ecchymoses, &c.
  Case XXVI.—C.  L., an Irishman, aged 31.   Was  observed  from
five minutes to an  hour after death ; the contractility  was  found  to be
active,  but after  appending a weight of 2 to 3 lbs. to the hand,  the arm 
21
 was unable to raise the weight more than twice ; a third blow caused the
 biceps to be convulsed ; it gathered up in a knotty heap, which, by forci-
 ble extensions and frictions, was, at length, removed temporarily,  but in
 half an hour it returned, and was unchanged as long as observed,  being
 to the touch like a bony tumor.
   Case  XXVII.—C. S., a German, aged 50.  Observations from fifteen
 minutes to two hours after death ; heat from 109° to 102° ; the contrac-
 tility, though  strong, was extinguished in the right arm by five  or six
 blows.  The  left arm, about two hours after, was  somewhat rigid,  but
 frictions and extensions caused the contractile function to revive again.

                Fracture of the Leg—Gangrene—Death.

   Case  XXVIII.—J, A., a German, aged 33.   Dead  two and  a half
 hours ; winter, room 54^° ; a single blow with the flat side ofthe hatchet
 produced flexion, but exhausted the contractile  force  for half an  hour,
 when it  slightly  returned.  The supinators and  pronators acted  for an
 hour longer than the flexors of the arm ; the experiments  ending five
 hours after death.

 The Destruction  of the Contractile Function in one arm does not affect the
   other; this  rule has no exceptions, and  is  illustrated  in  the following
   Yellow Fever Cadaver:

   Case  XXIX.—S. F., a Cincinnatian, aged 24.  Dead half an hour
 when the experiments began.   The right arm was struck with the  flat
 side of the  hatchet,  the hand was carried to the  ear; the second time to
 the  mammary region ; a third to the perpendicular ; a fourth caused  but
 a slight motion, and two  more, more severely laid on, completely killed
 the contractility, leaving the print ofthe instrument as upon dough.  In
 an hour  after, the left arm was found to be contractile as the right had
 been, if not more so.  The thigh,  two hours  after death,  and an hour
 after the removal ofthe viscera, gave nearly 107.  Other cases illustra-
 tive  of this  point are deemed superfluous.

   If several blows on the same spot follow  each other rapidly, there  is  but
 one contraction, but they exhaust  the contractile function more than a single
 blow ; if the force be greatly augmented, the contractility may be  killed, al-
 most immediately, in  the muscle struck, without impairing the action of any
 other part.
   This force has  no resemblance  to  that purely physical property of
 bodies, called  elasticity.   A man  may stand on  the hand of the cadaver
 while the blow  is being made on the biceps ; let him  then step off the
 hand, and the  contraction  will  follow as usual.   If the power be feeble,
 the relaxation will be quick in  most cases ;  the arm will fall back upon
 the plane from all points short ofthe perpendicular, each elevation being
 less  than the preceding one,  until the force is expended.  Should  the
 hand pass its  meridian, gravitation will of course aid the contraction in
 bringing it to  the trunk.
   The blood has no appreciable influence upon  post-mortem contractili-
ty, because when the* limb  is severed from the trunk and drained of its
 blood, its action  is not thereby diminished.   Hence  the following state-
ment by  Sir Charles Bell  in his work on the  hand requires, at  least in
the dead  subject, some modification :—
                         2 
22
  " The muscular tissue has a living endowment, a power of contraction and
relaxation, which is  supplied  by the circulation of the blood, the source of all
vital power."

  In some instances,  as  in the following, great losses  of blood before
death were not preventive  of the most intense post-mortem contractions.

Much Ante-mortem Hemorrhage,  moderate Post-mortem  Caloricity, with
                      powerful Contractions :—

  Case XXX.—M. D., a female, aged 30.  Dead half an hour; had an
enormous sub-mammary effusion of blood, forming a bed two feet in cir-
cumference, amounting to several pounds-; the fore-arm was raised, and
the hand brought to the umbilical region after each  blow ; in three hours
slight rigidity  was noticed in the neck ;  in five hours, when  burial took
place, every joint not  included in the neck, was perfectly  flexible.   The
axilla and vagina did not range above 100°.
   The difficulty, perhaps  I  should  say  impossibility, of showing any
exact and  necessary  connexions between cadaveric  contraction,  flexi-
bility, and temperature, will be best illustrated by giving an outline of a few
cases.   It will be seen that contractility may  be present where the heat
is, at least, very moderate, and where it is greatest  for seven hours after
death, that rigidity may take place  much in  advance of the maximum
heat.  Rigidity is at first  local,  often irregular, and  sometimes absent
as  long as looked for, and  may possibly never take place, as I  might
more fully show were it necessary.   Contractility may take place dur-
ing the rise or  fall of the temperature,  indifferently and in one region,
while rigidity  may prevail  in another, and is sometimes absent in cases
where great heat and flexibility are present.

The following  are Cases illustrative of Contractility in connection with Post-
   mortem Calorification and Partial Rigidity ; the maximum and minimum
   temperatures being included :—

   Case  XXXI.—J. K., a  Philadelphian, aged 25.   In fifteen minutes
after death presented the contractile phenomena  in its most intense
form, but which declined  wholly in  one hour, the body being every-
where  flexible.   In  half an  hour  after rigidity  set in.   This body,
which  before death had  been remarkably cold, had  a temperature after
death  as high as 109°, and which did not refrigerate  below 1U4° in
three hours after.
   Case XXXII.—L.  S., a Swede, aged  48.   In three hours after death
was rigid in  his  legs,  neck and jaws.  The arms had  lost  nearly all
contractility,  while the axilla and perineum,  each,  gave 109° ; at five
and a half hours the  heat  was  still 103°, long after rigidity had become
general.
   Case  XXXIII.—J. H., an  Irishman, aged 36.   Of  gigantic frame,
estimated at 200 lbs. ; in fifteen minutes after death the neck, jaws, and
recti muscles  were immovably fixed—the contractility of the arm being
very powerful.   In an hour and ten minutes the rigidity became univer-
sal, the thigh  being at 107°.   In one and a half hours the epigastrium
■vvas at  106-p, and the brain 101°.
   Case XXXIV,—S. G., a New Yorker,  aged 22.   In  fifteen minutes
after death, presented contractility in its most  active form ; the  entire 
23
body being flexible, but soon after the neck became stiff, then the legs,
arms, &c.  The temperature in the axilla and thigh exceeded 107° ; in
an  hour and  a half it  was nearly the same:  in three hours the thigh
was 100°.
  Case XXXV.—J. Q., a (German,  aged 24.   In  three fourths  of an
hour after death was universally flexible, and contractility was  power-
ful, temperature 109° ; in an hour rigidity took place.   In  two and a
half hours the heat was nearly 107°.

 Cases without contractility, showing the temperature to be  high with or with-
                            out flexibility.

   Case XXXVI.—J.  S., a German, aged  29.   One  hour after death,
 rigid in the neck and legs, moderately  so  in the arms ; axilla, chest
 and epigastrium, each 107°, thigh 104°  ; in about four hours universal
 rigidity, thigh 105°.
   Case XXXVII.—C. .B., a New Yorker, aged 23.   In one  hour after
 death, neck rigid, legs and arms moderately  so; universal rigidity in two
 hours; the thigh did not reach its maximum, 104°, until sixteen minutes
 after.
   Case XXXVIII.—M. H., a German, aged 32.  In about fifteen min-
 utes after death was everywhere flexible ; in half an hour  the limbs,
 which were  without contractility, became  stiff, the thigh being nearly
 107° ; two hours later the latter was  106°.
   Case XXXIX.—G.  L., a  German.  At two hours after  death  had
 flexibility of the neck and rigidity ofthe limbs  and  recti muscles, with
 a heat of  104° ; in  four hours the body, excepting the neck, was very
 rigid, the heat being only one degree less in the centre.
   Case XL.—J. F., a  female.  In two hours after death was extremely
 rigid in the superior extremities ; the neck,  legs, &c, being limber ;  the
 heat being 104°, and in an hour after 105° ; at three and a  half hours,
 neck limber,  legs, &c, stiff;  heat 104°, and at the fifth hour 102^° ;
 at  the seventh hour the thigh was 100°, the body rigid,  and the neck still
 perfectly limber and  as at first.
   The continuance  of, or rather the degree in  which post-mortem heat
 is  evolved bears no proportion, I repeat,  to  the  intensity of post-mortem
 contraction.   The great heat developed in the dead body, I have endea-
 vored  to  illustrate  in  the  medical  journals of our country, and  will
 not, therefore, dwell  upon that subject at present.   I find, however, on
 examination  of the original papers not yet  published in detail, that  for
 the most part, when the heat had declined,  the contractility was  ex-
 hausted, but that the presence of great heat, ranging  as  high as 113°,
 did not by any means imply the presence of contractility, nor the absence
 of rigidity.   Authors seem not to have been aware of the  augmenta-
 tion of animal heat  after death; some have, it  is  true,  noticed  an
 increase of heat after death from cholera,  compared with the extreme
 coldness of the surface during the  last  hours of life :  but  has any one
 hinted that this post-mortem heat ever rose as high as  even the healthy
 standard, to  say nothing of 14°  or  15° beyond that?  I  mention  this
 merely to explain  what MM.  Orfila  and Nysten mean by animal heat,
 when  they assert  •' that  rigidity is incompatible with  its presence."—
 (Todd's Cyc. Anat. Sf Phys.)   Dr. Beatty advances the same doctrine
 (Cyc. Prac. Med.);  so does Beclard (Gen. Anat.),  not to name many 
24
  others.   Nothing can be more erroneous.   The heat often increases with
  the rigidity.
    Post-mortem  contractility, in the human cadaver, has no connection with
  or dependence upon,  the spinal marrowi   This may be received  as an
  axiom,  though directly opposed to the reflex theory, and is easily proved by
  amputating the shoulder in a proper manner*   In performing this opera-
  tion, it  is best to  leave a few portions of the skin undivided, so as to tie
  the arm down to the trunk, so that the former during action may not turn
  quite over.    I select the following yellow fever cases for illustration.
    Case XLI.—A. M., a German, aged 30.  More than four hours after
  death, and one  hour after  dissection,  possessed the contractile  function
  in a high degree.  An arm was amputated so as to include th# scapula
  and its  muscles ; after which, blows  were  repeatedly directed upon the
  flexors of the fore-arm, which was as often elevated to the perpendicular j
  one of the inferior extremities, an hour after amputation at the hip-joint,
  being generally rigid, presented,  nevertheless, contractility in the form of
 massive ridges at the places of contact  from blows.
   Case  XLII.—P. L., an Irishman, aged 20.  Dead  four  hours before
 the experiments were begun.  Both fore-arms raised  themselves to  the
 perpendicular several  times.  The left arm  was amputated so as to
 include  the scapula and its muscles.  Twenty ounces of blood by estima-
 tion were  rapidly discharged by  the operation.   The temperature  had
 ranged for more than four hours in  different regions, at  from 34° to 33°
 of Reaumur (nearly 109° to 106>° of Fah.).  The arm was more  con-
 tractile after  than  before its separation from the  spinal marrow, rising
 after each blow without any loss of motor force as long as observed.

 Cases showing that  Amputation of the Shoulder, and the subsequent Divi
  sion of all the  Nerves, Vessels and Muscles of the Arm, except the per
  pendicular Flexors ofthe Fore-arm, do not in the least impair the contrac-
  tile function either in force or duration :—

  Case XLIIL—J.  G., an Irishman, aged 32.   Dead three hours ; dis-
 sected one hour; viscera all removed from the body; the right arm was
 extended, and  slapped with a piece of  shingle, the force being scarcely
 sufficient to injure a living person.  This blow was repeated at intervals
 five or six  times; each time the man struck  his hand against his shoulder
 with great celenty and force.  A  heavy hammer was then tied in the
 palm  of the hand but even this failed to counteract the  muscular force •
 he struck  himself heavily against  the  breast.  A hatchet estimated  at
 2*  to  3  lbs.,  was substituted for the hammer;  with this he struck the
 breast several  times, when the contractility suddenly ceased.  One hour
 after this, and more than four after death, both arms, including the sea
 pulary muscles,  were amputated, discharging enormous quantities  of

  •We have Bentham's authority, « that  no man doth wrong for wrone's sake •" but
still, it would seem, that some will argue for ar-ument's sake  It hll fLLl• i Jul
andSTh9'^ ,CUttinS,°ff the, sh°ulder' and a11^" ^MeneTves of  n'e a™
and  all the muscles not devoted to flexion, still has nerves blendedTwTth its lltZ' 
I
25
 blood—hot blood—for the  post-mortem  temperature had  been ranging
 from 36° to 34°  of Reaumur (or 113° to 109° of  Fah.); the  left arm
 was extended on  the table, resting on the hand and on the  olecranon, on
 the angle of the  scapula and the sternal end  of the clavicle, presenting
 the deltoid uppermost.   The most active contractions followed every
 blow, the arm twisted about  like a wounded  snake, the muscles of the
 scapula  were convulsed.   The  shoulder  having lost its point  d'appui
 upon the trunk, the whole  arm sometimes turned over, so that the del-
 toid rested on the table.   Gradually, as in the former case, the  contrac-
 tility began to decline.   I how severed all the muscles of the arm, in its
 lower third, except the biceps and brachiales, including all  the accessi-
 ble nerves and vessels, but  I  found the contractility as  active as before.
 It  was, of course, moderate from the previous exhaustion.   The ampu-
 tation at the  shoulder, the  cutting of all  muscles,  &c, but the flexors,
 had not  impaired the contractile  function in  the least.   The amputated
 limbs remained very warm about three hours.        %
   According to Bichat, the more  rapid the death, the more  powerful and
 enduring are  the contractions caused by galvanism.   This rule has no
 certain application to yellow fever subjects, in whom percussion  pro-
 duces the greatest muscular  activity.   Still,  however, it must be  admit-
 ted, as a  general  rule, that yellow fever, which is so rapid in its march,
 presents  more frequent and  enduring cases of contractility than other
 fevers, according to my experience.   But when we come to particularise
 individual  cadavera in yellow fever, it  will   be  found very often, that
 among those who have died  most quickly, contractility will be present,
 or  absent, just as among those who  had  lingered  for a longer period.*
 Judging from the published  accounts of galvanic  muscular action in
 criminals after execution, I suppose  that the yellow fever subject often
 presents a greater susceptibility to contraction.  Professor Guy "limits
 the contractile period in extreme cases to two hours."—(Med. Juris.)—Pro-
 fessor Dunglison "to two hours after the cessation of respiration."—Phys.,
 vol. i.,  p. 338.)   Percussion,  as I have  often  observed,  excites contrac-
 tions in the yellow  fever subject  many  hours—one to fourteen—after
death, and even  hours after  complete  dissection of the brain,  spinal
cord,  viscera,  and  limbs, and  the  removal of many pounds of blood,
as the case above  mentioned will  show.
  * The contractile force is to the organic muscular system, what gravitation is to
the inorganic kingdom.  The  one is intermitting ; the other unceasing: both are
ultimate, and therefore inexplicable principles.
  The  explanation of muscular action by the anterior  roots of the spinal cord,
though it meets the eye  from  every point of the medical  horizon, is, I repeat it,
wholly unsatisfactory.  The same may be said of thft  pathological facts which  are
relied on to provs the reflex doctrine.  Not to repeat what I have elsewhere said, I
will quote Biclard, who, after  declaring the spinal cord to  have but one office,
namely, that of a conductor transmitting a sensation by its posterior, and motion by
its anterior roots,—being the seat of the principle of irritability, so that its destruc-
tion or removal renders the excitation of motions impossible, adds, that he has made
many experiments  upon animals, showing that injury of the nerves is followed by
no grave accidents—the reunion and the re-establishment functions take place very
promptly.   (Gen.  Anat., passim.)  The practical Sir Astley Cooper, after many
bon& fide operations upon the human nerves for tumors and the like, having twice
removed portions of the great sciatic nerve, concludes, that " wounds of the nerves
are  followed by little irritation—that they are very rarely inflamed, and that tetanus
is the result of injury to tendinous rather than to nervous structures."  {Lett.,
TyrreVs Edit., vol. i., p. 245 ; vol. iii., p. 125.) 
26
  Mr. John Felix, a young gentleman of veracity, long a resident stu-
dent in the Charity  Hospital, has just informed me that a man who  died
of a thoracic  affection on  the  3d of Jan., 1846, fourteen  hours after
death presented a strong example of muscular contraction, the fore-arm
having been elevated  to the perpendicular after  each  blow given  with
the inferior edge  of the operator's hand.   I may be allowed to remark,
that the professor of physiology should consider his course  incomplete
without demonstrating  the phenomena of muscular action, thus laid  bare
to the  view of his class—a process so  slow, so lucid, and so unlike the
muscular convulsions  excited by galvanic  piles,  wires, nerves, and the
like, as to produce on  the minds of the beholder an indelible impression.
Here  seeing is  believing.   The  explanation, as  in all ultimate facts or
laws,  may  be impossible,  as  in gravitation,  attraction,  and  so forth.
This,  however, is no valid  objection.   When a vivisector gives  his ex-
periments, we cannot verify them without trailing with him  through the
blood  of animals half dead or  killed  for  the purpose—a method too
repulsive to be practised—which  cannot  be said  of percussion, since it
does not require a wound even  in the cadaver.   Mr. Brereton, who, by
the way, is not, and, I believe, never was a worshipper ofthe Reflex  Idol,
says " that according  to his experience the reflex action is  never deve-
loped  when  sensation is  completely destroyed."—(Lancet, 1844.)  The
bare possibility of this is  a fatal objection.
   Post-mortem Contractility, when excited by percussion, is the best fun-
damental type of the periodicity of the contractile function,—better, cer-
tainly, than  that originating in galvanic electricity ; voluntary action
may  be much  more  perfect;  electric action necessarily  more rapid.
The contraction operates  for several seconds or minutes.   Relaxation, by
which the muscle is made to assume its  normal figure, presents another
distinct interval.  The counter-motion, though less prolonged, is equally
distinct.   Then  comes the period of repose (analogous to that following
the fatigue, in  living muscles), the forerunner  of renewed efforts—
efforts, however, which must speedily exhaust the quantum of contrac-
tile force  for ever.   The period of exhaustion may be hastened or de-
ferred, in many cases, according to  the  manner of procedure.  The
contractility may be  killed by a severe blow, especially if  at  the same
time a weight be fastened in the palm.   It is worthy of remark,  that by
a proper application of blows, all the elemental motions of the arm  may
be produced more or less perfectly, as flexion, etc.
   Does percussion  act in any sense  like galvanic electricity ?  Let us
see.   Is the cuticle any  barrier to percussion ?  No.   Does percussion
 require a complete circle  of metals,  nerves, and  muscles ?   No.   Does
 it act through the  anterior roots, or  other portion ofthe spinal cord?
 No.   Does it act  in  a rapid,  inconceivably rapid, convulsive manner 1
 No.   Dr. Hooper says, in  speaking of galvanic action in  frogs, &c, that
 " contractions can  be  excited even  to the  instant of incipient putrefac-
tion," and, if so, here is  another great  difference.  Motion, by this me-
 thod,  is diametrically opposed to every kind of motion known in  natural
 philosophy : it  is opposed  to  the Newtonian  law of  mechanics, which
 requires motion to  be  in a straight line—to be in proportion to  the im-
 pressing  force, and, in the  opposite direction, to be equal and contrary to
 the re-action.   A more complete contrast to these laws cannot be ima-
 gined, than that a blow, the direction of which is towards the side of the
 arm opposite the biceps, should cause a contrary motion to that of flexion, 
27
to say nothing of a slow intermediate motion incidental to the  relaxation
of large dense masses  of muscle, and, lastly, extension—a counter mo-
tion.   If we could explain  mechanically,-that movement which causes
the cadaver  to  lay his hand on  his breast, where, by the great law of
inertia, it ought for ever to  remain, we must fail to explain the contrary
motion, by the same force:  dead matter, once at rest, cannot  pass into a
state  of motion by any  inherent power of its own.  We are, therefore,
obliged to admit the existence of a force—a force  adequate, not only to
overcome the inertia of the  arm itself, but that of  weights placed in the
 palm:  to call this principle  chemical, electrical, reflex, or mechanical, is
 chimerical.  If we reject a  vital force, in this case, some name, however
 unmeaning, maybe substituted : call it the vis musculosa, or the Essence
 of Owl, as the Elfst Indians denominate the agent which causes epide-
 mics (as we  are told  by Bishop Heber).   It is a force totally  unlike that
 from impulsion, since it bears no relation to the momentum, direction, or
 instantaneousness of the impinging body.   It is, as  already  mentioned,
 unlike electricity, which would probably travel  round the globe thirty
 times during the period  necessary to produce one contraction of the biceps.
 It is  unlike mechanical, chemical, cohesive, and gravitative forces, being
 sui generis.   Here we  must adopt the last words uttered by the astrono-
 mer, La Place, " Ce que nous connaissons est  peu  de chose, ce que nous
 ignorons est immense."   " We should wander on eternally in darkness,"
 says Bichat, " the moment we  quit the  plain path of experiment.   Let
 us be  contented, therefore, to collect  facts, examine and  compare them
 together, and make ourselves acquainted  with their  general results.
 Such inquiries can form the only true theory of the vital powers ;  all
 beyond it is  conjecture."—(Res. on  Life  and Death.)   To attempt an
 explanation of this phenomenon  by means of a cataract of  such words
 as reflex, efferent, afferent, chemical,  galvanic, is idle.   Whenever mus-
 cular contraction shall be  ascertained to  be a simple element, or a com-
 pound, having a definite chemical character, then it will deserve a suit-
 able chemical name ;  until then, an unmeaning, or non-theoretical name,
 is as good as any ; indeed, the vis  vitce, is very much of that sort; for,
 strictly speaking, it represents a mass of facts, not yet  rendered amena-
 ble to the laws of the  physical sciences, rising, as  it does, above or be-
 yond inert matter, and being very often opposed to the modus operandi of
 the latter, so far as our present knowledge goes.
    Jhe unbelievers in the vis vitce, though often  regarded as a  sort of athe-
   its in .physiology, are, notwithstanding their materialism, no unbelievers
 at all, except when vitalism is concerned.   They  are sufficiently  credu-
 lous, in advance of experimental  proof, to believe, that life is only so
 much electricity, or  galvanism, or magnetism, or chemical, crystallized
  matter.  Even some  of the vitalists  themselves hold that life is matter
 of an  imponderable and sublimated character.
    Were I to assert, that the vis percussionis, by exciting the vis musculosa
  or the vis motoria, overcomes the vis inertia, and at  the same time  main-
  tain that these words afforded an explanation  of the phenomena in ques-
  tion, nothing would appear more ridiculous.   But,  when these terms are
  used  simply to characterize three different classes of facts, often con-
 joined  in a manner wholly unknown, yet so linked together  that one fol-
  lows  the other in a definite order, then the case is  quite different.   The
  vis inertia, though apparently the simplest law of matter, is, in truth, like 
28
motion by contact, one of the greatest stumbling-blocks in philosophy, to
say nothing of the more obscure and eccentric laws of vitalism.
   The vis vita and  the vis inertia, or the animal and mechanical laws,
perpetually intersect, retard, accelerate,  modify  or combine  with  each
other.  The former, extremely complex, and marked by intermitting ac-
tions, with  intervals of repose, is always more  or less  amenable to  the
laws of inert  matter.   In  the present instance,  the  flexors of the arm,
inserted as they are in the unfavorable end of a long  lever,  near the ful-
crum or elbow joint, must be considered as exerting a great  force to raise
the arm alone, to say nothing of weights  placed in the palm.   The rais-
ing of three pounds, placed  in the extreme end of the lever or palm,
according to the data of physiologists, is nearly  equal to 200  lbs. !   In
some instances, I suppose the weights raised might ha% been more than
doubled without counterbalancing the contractile force.   Thus, by add-
ing the weight of the arm or lever beyond the insertion of the  biceps, the
whole will amount to about 10 or 12 lbs., having an enormous leverage,
like av pair  of steelyards.   Be the  muscular  force what it  may, it con-
tends face  to face with  the vis inertia, which it antagonizes  for a certain
period in  the  cadaver,  independently of the galvanic circle  of metals,
muscles and nerves, and in opposition to the reflex  logic.     Why em-
ploy a complicated apparatus, when a stroke with the  hand,  a horn,* a
cane, or hatchet, will answer  better 1   " Every muscle," says Bichat,
" which has been strongly contracted, requires a  certain period of relax-
ation, before it can be excited again by contraction.   Hence the neces-
sary intermissions of locomotion and voice."
   The contractile function in the cadaver presents  several phenomena
already alluded to, more curious and difficult to explain than simple con-
traction, as, relaxation  and counter-action.   " The  contraction of  the
muscle," says Professor Dunglison,  " is followed by  its relaxation ;  the
fibres returning to their former parallel condition. This appears to be a
passive state, and to result from the suppression of the nervous influx by
the will; in other words, to be produced  by the simple cessation of con-
traction.   Some have, however,  regarded both states to  be active, but
without proof.  Barthez maintains,  that " the relaxation of the muscle is
produced by a nervous  action, the reverse of that which occasions  its
contraction ; the will  relaxing the  muscles  as well as contracting
them."  This latter view, omitting the supposed agencies of the nerves
and the will,  receives support  from cadaveric phenomena.  The  con-
tractile force  elevates the fore-arm, with or  without a  weight in the
palm, so as to rest against the breast.  The vis inertia, requires these
masses to remain at rest.  This  sometimes actually happens,  after  one
or more contractions.  If the  last  blow  has completely  exhausted the
motor power,  the muscle does not relax in some few cases.   The tume-
fied, dense  zigzag mass remains contracted until  the rigor mortis super-
venes.f  But, in other cases, this relaxation is repeated,  as  if  by inter-
  * I have, for reasons that will occur to the reader, used both conductors and non-
conductors of electricity, in exciting contraction, and  have caused the hand of the
cadaver to be held down, that the mere mechanical impulse ofthe blow might first
pass off,—a useless precaution, which I  was driven to by some theorists, who, not
admitting anything to be new  under the sun, vainly puzzled themselves with fanci-
ful explanations.
  f This occurrence affords, as I imagine, the very best opportunity for the student
of minute and microscopic anatomy, to ascertain the structural phenomena inciden- 
29
 mediate power, the forerunner of a powerful counter-action, or extension
 of the arm.  These antagonistic and intermediary movements seem to
 indicate a three-fold  power.   In  the living  body  frictions  cause  the
 speedy relaxation of  those  painful, knotty masses of muscle,  called
 cramps; sometimes in the dead body, the period ofthe contraction of.the
 muscle may be shortened, and that of relaxation hastened by  the  same
 means.  Even after the rigor mortis has declared itself, the  arms, by
 flexions, extensions, and frictions, may sometimes  be restored to a  con-
 tractile condition, as already shown.
   Upon the whole, the percussional method, how simple  soever  it may
 seem, gives rise to very interesting phenomena,  of a  character but little
 complex, and though  it may lack  the dignity  of galvanic  machinery,
 the  horrors of vivisections,  and the mystery of the  reflex theory,  yet
 it should not be ridiculed,  nor condemned,  because it  fails  in dramatic
 effect.
   The illustrious Franklin had published his hypothesis, namely,  that
 lightning and electricity were the same, before he  had positive evidence of
 its truth.   But when he undertook the experimental proof, by  means of
 a kite, made of a silk  handkerchief, such was his dread of being laughed
 at by the Philadelphians for the simplicity of his proceeding, that he let
 no one but his son know it.   He went to a retired place in a  shed,  and
 sent up his kite.   A cloud passed, but  without  effect.   He  was  in  des-
 pair.  Another cloud  arose.  He now drew down the lightning.  Hypo-
 thesis became  fact.  Franklin had the sublime  pleasure,  perhaps  never
 before equalled, of subjecting  the dread  thunderbolts of Heaven to  his
 will.  The kite  experiment gave  place to millions of lightning  rods,
 which  everywhere  bristle against the skies to disarm the thunder-bear-
 ing  cloud of its terrors, and to perpetuate the name ofthe experimenter.
 Gratitude, not ridicule, was his reward.   This statement, though a digres-
 sion, serves to show that the  most simple experiment  may  lead to  the
 most important results.
 1 Bichat's doctrine of two lives—one, the perceiving,  feeling, willing,
 moving, external, called the animal;  the other, the nutritive, the  nega-
 tive, internal, called  the organic; may  serve to illustrate  post-mortem
 contraction.   Without admitting to  the  fullest extent, with  Bichat  and
 Broussais, that contractility is  a " fundamental, vital property," we might
justly regard it as a leading feature in  the vital  phenomena of at  least
one  tissue,—the   muscular.  If we regard life, not  as  a  unity,  nor
yet as a duality,  but as a  multiform aggregation of particular  vitalities,
the harmonious  operation  of which  constitutes  health, the derangement
of which constitutes disease, and the general dissolution ol which  consti-
tutes death, then  it will not be unreasonable to suppose, that each tissue,
having a kind of sub-life, or special life of its own, may  die  before, or
after some other  tissues.   Hence, the muscular and capillary  tissues
 may, and often do, survive death in this detailed sense, among the numerous
structures and functions of the general  system.  But the  presence of
tal to the contracted state of the muscular tissue, as the rigor mortis in this  fixes,
as if by congelation, or petrifaction, all the parts, exactly at the moment of their con-
traction.  Certain it is, that an apparent increased cohesion,  and augmentation of
volume, may take place without any approximation  of the ends of the muscle, as
when  the fore-arm  is rigid ;  while the belly of the biceps is strongly contractile,
though both its ends may be fixed as already explained. 
30
this muscular life, isolated from all other yital phenomena, furnishes no
positive  proof  of the  presence  of what is  strictly and popularly called
life.
   After the death of the brain,  the lungs, the heart, the senses, the will,
&c, a degree  of vitality in its simplest elementary form  seems to linger
in the  muscular tissues,  and  which   impulsion makes manifest  by a
route so direct  and short, that  the motor power and the contractile phe-
nomena appear absolutely conjoined as  cause and effect;   and  if its
modus is not easily understood,  neither  does it assume  a host of  inex-
plicable agents—nor afferent, nor efferent roads,  as in the  reflex  sys-
tem.   It does  not offer an assumed,  circuitous transmission as  a good
explanation.
   Post-mortem contractility being, as we  have seen, independent of the
nervous system, suggests many important physiological and pathological
truths to the impartial inquirer.   Probably many of those diseases now at-
tributed solely to lesions of innervation,* begin, continue, and end chiefly
in the  muscular system ; for example, tetanus,  spasms of the  gullet,
stomach, bowels, bladder, urethra,  womb, and  hour-glass-contraction,
cramps, &c.   Why resort to a lesion of innervation—a lesion not disco-
verable before or after death, by any of our senses,  when  the patient
and his attendant have  every proof of a muscular disease, in tetanus, for,
example ?   Haller mentions  a girl  affected with tetanus, bent  back-
ward  (opisthotonos), whose  abdomen  sustained  a weight  of 800 lbs.,
without straightening the body!  Simple rigidity, so universal and per-
sistent,  is  quite sufficient to exhaust  and to kill, as  every one at all
acquainted with the essentially remitting action of the  muscular system
in health  must know.   Let the morbid  anatomist  not direct his whole
attention to the  brain  and nerves,  in these  cases ; it may seem more
learned to dwell  on assumed  functions  of the  spinal,  ganglionic, and
central nerves,  and their reflex action,  &c.   The muscles should be
examined-,—their color, cohesion, texture, &c.  Does the  tetanic  rigidity
relax to be replaced by cadaveric rigidity,  &c. ?   Might not the subcu-
taneous operation of dividing one  of  the tendinous ends of a wounded
muscle, as soon as the first symptom  of tetanus declared itself,  prevent
  * Innervation !  Happy word to conceal our ignorance !  It merits all the bene-
dictions which Sancho Panza pronounced upon the inventor of sleep, " it covers us
over like a garment!"
  " Innervation," says Professor Harrison  of New Orleans, " includes five classes of
phenomena—change of nutritive action, muscular motion, sensation, the intellec-
tual affections, and the emotions ; but as the change is essentially  chemical, it is
obvious that in each of the latter  the first is included.  Muscular action, sensation,
thought, &c, are, therefore, mere results, &c."—(JVerv. Sys., p. 64.)
  The spinal cord seems to  be the  grand laboratory of Innervation.  The spinal
chemistry, the spinal physiology, and the spinal pathology, are sufficiently mysteri-
ous in themselves; but when  enveloped in  the dense fogs of the reflex action,
ebbing and flowing,  no one can tell which  way the land lies—a stratum  of fog rolls
along  the sky, shutting out the light—another still darker scuds  along the land and
the water, hiding both ;  it is a poor  consolation to hear  that one mass  is afferent,
and the other efferent.
  Though a little out of place, I will take the liberty of making another quotation
from my learned confrere, who has  so ably advocated the  cause of the Chemical
School.  " Every case of fever from a local injury is but a manifestation of  reflex
action from the spinal cord.   All the tissues are affected by the reflex action of the
spinal cord ;—these  are chemical changes, because the essential  actions of life are
themselves of a chemical character."—(Pp. 24, 55.) 
31
the development of that horrible disease ?   When cramps, convulsions,
and spasms, present themselves  in the  muscles with  evident changes,
even before death, why should  we invoke  the nerves, exclusively,  in
which changes cannot  be demonstrated ?  The spinal marrow  is,  doubt-
lessly, necessary to health, and liable to disease,* but these are muscles
by no means  over-rich in nerves  that  are quite  as  necessary to life.
The heart will  bear vivisection  still  less than  the  brain and spinal
cord.   To expound  pathology  chiefly by supposing changes in  the
nervous tissue that cannot be recognized by our senses,  neither  before
nor after death, or to rely on equivocal vivisections, as the cutting up of
all the other tissues, or opening the brain to get at the great  nerves of
the centre, is truly a reflex, not a direct road  to the knowledge  of the
theory and practice  of medicine.  And when  Dr. M. Hall  positively
asserts  that " the whole lone of the muscular system,"  and " all spasmo-
dic diseases, belong  to the reflex function of the spinal cord," we must
dissent  with  all  due deference to  an authority so highly respectable.
That the muscles may be primarily affected by many diseases is  by no
means improbable.   In the commencement  of fever, especially of yellow
fever, the  patient more uniformly complains of soreness and pricking
pains in the  muscular parts than of the head, or spinal marrow.   To
feel  "tired  all  over"  (to  use the  patient's usual  phrase) is  more
characteristic  than  even  chills.  At  all events, the  pathology  of the
nervous system  is  not, as  yet, sufficiently certain   to  justify  us  in
ascribing such symptoms  exclusively  to  the ganglionic,  central,  or
spinal nerves.
   Let us return  a moment to tetanus,—the  type of reflex pathology; the
disease, above all others, wherein no morbid change is met with  in the
nervous system,  its supposed seat, according to all the great authorities,
as Larrey, Cooper,  Hennen, and others.   Curling, in his prize essay,
says the same ; yet he ascribes the disease to the motory tract (tractus
motorius).  Larrey  refers  this  disease to the  spinal  cord, though his
facts, and  even his  method of cure,  have,  if I may judge, a contrary
import.  Does not his  method of amputation, in the incipient stage,  cure
by relaxing the  muscular tension of the limb, rather  than that of the
anterior roots ?  Dr. Hennen,  in his  dissections,  looked, where others
have looked, into the viscera and nervous system, only to be disappointed;
and  yet he incidentally mentions having found  " the muscles a good deal
injected with a serous effusion."
   Mr. Curling, in his prize essay on  tetanus,  remarks:   " The muscles
are not usually rigid after death."  Dupuytren somewhere mentions that
he found the muscles after death from tetanus reddened  and  engorged.
In his "Clinical Surgery" (chapter xvi.), I find  the following passage:—
"  Necropsy of J. B. Roger (who had died  of  tetanus), thirty-six  hours
after death.  Great rigidity of all the parts of the body which had not been
affected, with tetanus ;  but  the  muscles of the neck, shoulders,  and,  in
general, all those regions in  which the tetanic rigidity  had existed,  were
completely relaxed."
   Now, instead of going upon a circuitous  route to the anterior roots for
an explanation of either relaxation or rigidity, it would be easier to look
  * A voluminous French author, the late M. Pinel, never saw but three oses of
softening of the spinal marrow, two of which were published by M. MagenJie, in
his Journal, in 1S2L—{Med. Times,  Sept., 1845.) 
32
to the muscles  themselves.   Is not the rigor mortis the last struggle of
the expiring muscles?  When their force has been  nearly exhausted,
perhaps completely killed, by the morbid  or tetanic rigidity,  is it not  rea-
sonable to  suppose that  the  rigor mortis  would be greatly modified in
degree or duration,  if not prevented altogether ?   Do not the tetanized
muscles putrefy in advance of the non-tetanized ?   Every dissector sees,
in the relaxation or flexibility which follows cadaverous stiffness, the  first
step towards putrefaction ; and where the former does not appear at all,
or is  very transient, the latter supervenes with the greatest rapidity.
(It is right that I state I have never made  post-mortem examination in  this
malady with care.)
  In connection with this topic, I may be allowed to merely glance  at a
curious fact, the full development of which requires a distinct monograph,
in the morbid anatomy of southern fevers,  be the subjects thereof from
the tropics, the temperate, or the frigid zones, showing that the intestinal
canal, chiefly from the ileo-coecal valve to  the  anus, is often contracted
into a round, consolidated cord,  without having any of those changes
designated by atrophy, hypertrophy, hyperaemia, or inflammation.  This
contraction, for reasons which I cannot now offer, must exist anterior to
death, and continues (during  the general post-mortem rigidity and relaxa-
tion of the cadaver) up to the putrefactive period, obliterating the intes-
tinal cavity.  If any faeces  be present,  they are strongly compressed
either into rods or  balls, being nearly dry.   Sometimes the large intestine
resembles a cord with knots, at intervals, owing to scybalse, and seems,
moreover,  considerably  shortened.   In  other  cases, and indeed very
often, the natural  notchings,  puckerings, and pouches, are  replaced by
smooth surfaces, the whole intestine not exceeding the thumb in size.   In
rare instances, the contractions take place at  intervals,  leaving  inter-
vening links of the  natural dimensions.   These contractions strongly
oppose attempts at  dilatation.   Is this lesion tetanus of the intestinal mus-
cular tissue or coat ?
  In the Gazette Medicale, of February, 1845, Dr. L. A. Mercier relates
that M. Amussat,  having  introduced a  small bougie  into the urethra,
found it equally impossible to pass it  into the  bladder, or to  withdraw it,
until he had forced an injection into the canal.  Dupuytren says :  " The
first touch ofthe bougie causes the canal to contract, so that it is disen-
gaged with difficulty."   Now, this contraction appears to me  direct, not
reflex, being excited  in  the  urethra  and in  its contiguous muscles by
disease, pressure, &c, not wholly unlike  post-mortem contraction from a
blow.
  In cases of retention of urine, wherein the usual means  fail, success
may be  expected, generally, by  prolonged  pressure with the catheter
exciting  violent muscular contraction,  which, like healthy  and post-
mortem action, has a tendency to exhaust itself, or  pass  into relaxation,
agreeably to one of its great laws,  periodicity, and thus allowing  the
instrument to pass.   Hernia, dislocations,  and the like,  might also be
referred to in illustration.
  A great many involuntary tonic and clonic  contractions seem to  be far
more  muscular than reflex  and nervous in  their  origin and  progress,
being, in their irregular or morbid character,  more or less subject  to the
great physiological law of intermittence, which  is most clearly developed
in the  cadaver.  It is a far-fetched explanation of parturition, to refer it
to trje reflex action of the spinal cord  !  The pains in expelling the child, 
33
the placenta, coagula, &c, usually lasting several days, are just such as
might be expected in a great hollow  muscle while contracting, though in
these, as in all cases, theie is doubtless  a participation  of the  nervous
and other tissues.
   Simple contraction of the muscular tissue of the uterus is quite suffi-
cient to account for the principal phenomena,  without  reflex action.
   Cramps, in cholera, yellow fever,  etc.,  are,  no doubt, what  they seem
to be, affections of the  muscles, not  of the anterior  roots of  the  spinal
nerves.  There is a possibility of being  too profound for either  physic
or philosophy ;  cramps, morbid changes, inflammations, and the like, are
disdainfully called nothing but effects—and truly they are of that charac-
ter among  the all-knowing  immortals—as much so, without doubt, as
gravitation, which is also  an effect, though, to all mortal  men, it must, be
regarded, for practical purposes, as a cause or ultimate principle, beyond
which we cannot go.   How will such logicians explain the following two
cases, upon which I  found this question ?—

Does muscular contraction, after death, ever show itself unconnected with
                   any appreciable cause or excitant ?

   A young lady, who had  been my patient, died of cholera, in 1833, at
 Wheeling, Virginia, during my visit to that town.  I obtained, with diffi-
 culty, permission to make  a  post-mortem examination,  at about three
 hours after death, when  I  found a brisk twitching of the fingers, some-
 what like subsultus tendinum, being  chiefly in the flexor muscles, which
 latter had suffered before death from cramps  and strong flexions.   Here
 the disease of the muscle, so to speak, was still operating!
   The next case, still more remarkable, was  most carefully noted at the
 instant  of  its  occurrence, as follows:—1843,  October 8th,  11  A.M.
 Peter Duffy, Irishman, aged 28,  last from St. Louis, resident in New
 Orleans one month ; sick four days ; hand, 23°  ; bend of the arm, 26° ;
 axilla, 28° of Reaumur; body curved to the right; fists clenched ;  fore-
 arms flexed, pressing against the chest;  insensible ;  a column of black
 vomit, about twenty ounces, was projected  from the mouth,  like  a jet
 d'eau, two or three feet perpendicularly :  it fell back into the mouth, and
 on the right  side  of  the face ;  the mouth  being closed, two  smaller
 streams  were forcibly discharged through the nostrils upon the breast;
 the jaws became fixed ;  the lips compressed;  respiration ceased.  He
 was dead.  Every part of his body  was quiescent and motionless; but,
 soon  after,  he performed the following motions, occupying, by estimation,
 from three  to five minutes :—First he carried  his left hand, by a regular
 motion, to his throat, then  to the crown of his head ; the right arm fol-
 lowed the same route on the right side:  the left hand was then carried
 back  to the throat;  thence to  the breast,  reversing all its original
 motions ; the right hand  and arm performed  exactly the same motions:
 in all, eight consecutive,  identical, equable motions, in apparently equal
 times, and with a regularity indicative of volition,  though before death
 he was totally insensible.
    Post-mortem  contractility,  in its legal  applications, is not  without
 interest,  showing, as it   does," the   absurdity of some  grave judicial
 decisions, based solely on muscular motion, which  latter  has been held
 to be a sufficient proof of life in a new-born child, enabling the husband-
to inherit the  estate of  his wife during his  lifetime.  In a case given 
34
 by Dr. Dunglison (Phys., v. i.), the Court of Exchequer  (in  England)
 and the jury decided that the child  was born alive, because, when it was
 immersed  in  a warm  bath, a twitching and tremulous motion of the lips
 appeared twice.   What would the Cokes and  Blackstones of the law
 say, agreeably to this principle, on seeing a dissected, eviscerated  man
 performing regular  flexions, extensions, pronations, supinations,—lifting
 heavyweights from the floor and  placing them on  his chest ?   To de-
 signate the precise moment when living becomes dead matter  is indeed
 a  desideratum : " to be, or not to be, that is the question" which science,
 humanity, and the strongest of the human passions have not been  able
 to solve.
   Although three centuries  have rolled away, no anatomist, no medical
 man, can  think  of the  melancholy fate  of the  illustrious " Vesalius "
 without emotion :
   " Vesalius," says Mr. Hallam,  in  his  History  of the  Literature of
 Europe, " left every anatomist far  behind.   He was to anatomy what
 Copernicus was to astronomy.  A superstitious prejudice against human
 dissections had restrained ancient anatomists in general to pigs and apes.
 Vesalius  and his students  prowled by night in charnel-houses,  they dug
 up the dead, they climbed the  gibbet, in fear and in silence, to  steal the
 mouldering carcase of the  murderer, the risks  of ignominious punish-
 ment,  and the secret stings of superstitious remorse,  exalting, no doubt,
 the delight of those useful  but not very enviable  pursuits.   Being ab-
 surdly accused of having dissected a  Spanish gentleman before he was
 dead, Vesalius only escaped capital punishment, at  the instance of the
 Inquisition, by undertaking  a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he
 was shipwrecked, and died of famine in one of the Greek Islands" (in
 the year 1563).   The  only proof against Vesalius  was, that the young
 nobleman's heart  moved  (some  say palpitated)  when it was exposed to
 view by dissection.  This motion was doubtless nothing more than some
 contractions of the muscular fibres excited by the knife (as already ex-
 plained), and  which may be  produced  in every  heart  recently dead,
 without, perhaps,  a single exception.   Having digressed  so far, I  will
 add that, some years since, several  medical students declared to me that,
 while dragging an extremely large, yellow fever subject from one room
 to another, preparatory to dissection, the cadaver groaned  distinctly.  I
 arrived soon after—I found  the contractile function very strong.   Vene-
 section  discharged blood with force upward, against the principles of
 gravity, and in great quantity—(a curious subject, upon which I have
 the materials for a monograph).  The circumstances alluded to appeared
 wholly inexplicable, until, at length, I heard  a subject groan  with my
 own ears,—since  which I have caused  many groans by placing  the  foot
 against the chest, and  making strong  pressure, which causes the air to
 be expelled  through the  larynx and organs of speech with noises some-
times not unlike  difficult  breathing and  inarticulate moaning.   The
elasticity of the ribs causes them to return to their  former state, as soon
as the pressure is withdrawn ; the air at the  same time rushes through
the opening of the glottis to fill up the vacuum in the  chest.
   In most biographies of Vesalius,  it is said  that, after he had  dissected
down to the heart, this organ was found palpitating with life!   This
 nobleman, be  it observed, had been the patient of Vesalius, had died
 under his eyes, and showed no signs of life during  the early part of the
dissection, and  before the exposure of the heart—the friends of the de- 
35
ceased had requested the post-mortem examination, and did not, it may
be inferred, proceed prematurely.   The  operator  had long  before pub-
lished the greatest work on Anatomy  that the world  had ever seen (De
Corporis Humani Fabricd), and  must  have known what were the signs
of death.  From all  these circumstances it may be inferred  that the  ac-
cusation upon which  the Inquisition condemned  him to  the most  cruel
tortures and death, and  from which Charles V. saved  him, was absurd in
the highest degree, and originated  in that post-mortem contraction above
described.*
   The tales now circulated, chiefly by some European writers, going to
show that not a few persons have been buried  alive, or have  shown signs
of life after the phenomena supposed  to  belong to real death had  taken
place, may have no better foundation in most cases, than  that upon which
Vesalius was exiled.  It is, moreover, to be observed  that the  most cele
brated writers upon this subject, and upon premature interment, seem to
get their facts from reports  and rumors not properly authenticated.  Even
M. Julia de Fontenelle, who has written elaborately upon this  subject,
seems not  to have seen any of the cases  which he has collected from all
points of the compass,  chiefly from  the  newspapers.  Such facts afford
at best

                 " A most  lame and impotent conclusion,"

 which must  be productive of evil only, by arraying the strongest  pre-
judice  against the  progress of  science and the  increase  of  human
 happiness.
   I beg leave to add  the following  observations, suggested by  an  ex-
 amination of the last American edition of Bell's Anatomy and Physiology,
 made since the above essay was written.  In the articles entitled, "The
 Muscular, Power—The  Discoveries  of  the Author," etc., will be found
 the statements following :  " The key to  the system—is,  each filament or
 track of nervous matter" [whether from the anterior or posterior portions
 of the spinal  cord]  " has  throughout its whole length, its  peculiar en-
 dowment; "if its office be sensation, when injured, sensation, not  motion,
 will result;"—that  portion of the " ulnar nerve formed of the anterior
 root of the spinal nerve,  in all  its  extent  constitutes  one  organ, and
 ministers  to  one  function, the activity  of the  muscle of the hand  and
 finger."—" The nerves have  all the power  of exciting motion."—But,
 when he  comes to speak of a muscle's  quivering and  moving  after its
 separation from the body, he is sorely  puzzled.  He does  not, like  Dr.
 Hall, pretend that the mere introduction of a probe  into the spinal mar
  * It appears from the Boston Medical  Journal, for January, 1846, tua: a Dr.
Waterman, of Buffalo, N. Y., has been sentenced to hard labor for three years, in
the State Prison, for disinterring a dead body for dissection !  Has the age of
Vesalius returned ? Is it a crime to increase human happiness by increasing human
knowledge, its indispensable element?  Shall the worms on land and the sharks at
sea, be entrusted with the whole knowledge of Anatomy ?  Is that true philanthropy
which seeks to  save the ravisher and  murderer from capital punishment, that he
may be placed in prison side by side with an honest man, whose only crime consists
in operating  on the dead,  that he may know how to operate on the living  with
safety ?  The Quack is privileged to kill with impunity !  Will he  be in haste to
change his ways—to become a good citizen—that is, to get  a knowledge of his pro-
fession, when the punishment of a felon is to be the reward of his pains ? 
36
 row will cause  the  muscles to become " instantly flaccid, non-resilient,
 shapeless" (an expression too strong for imagination itself), "and  non-
 contractile."  Sir Charles attempts to account for the contraction :   but
 in so doing, he completely nullifies,  nay, destroys, his own theory of an-
 terior roots, as well as its reflex addition, both root and branch.  "There
 can be," says he, " no separation of the  muscular and nervous systems
 —the nerves  meet everywhere with the  muscular fibre." f Here, then,
 is a fine piece of logic !   The anterior tract of the spinal cord gives out
 the anterior roots, which are the sole agents of motion !  But when  the
 arm is separated from the body, then the motion is performed, not at the
 origin, but at  the extremities of the nerves,  which belong to the biceps,
 for example!  This is as good as an unconditional surrender.   I offer
 but one argument more, and I  appeal to a candid world  if it be not con-
 clusive against the doctrines of Bell and  Hall.  In striking the  biceps
 muscle, in the manner I have  described, nearly all the great  nervous
 cords distributed to the arm, fore-arm, wrist, hand, and fingers, are equally
 the  recipients of the  percussing  force, as  the external cutaneous, the
 median, etc.  Now, the same force that is applied to  the nervous twigs
 of the biceps, ought to communicate motion to all the parts upon which
 the  great  nerves  ramify ;  that is,  to the fore-arms  and fingers.   This
 never happens in the slightest degree ;  the motion is limited to the muscle
 struck, and not transmitted to the  muscles  to which  the nerves are  dis-
 tributed.
   In a word, the London experiments were made  upon  the  roots—the
 New  Orleans experiments upon  the terminations of the  nerves;  the
 former were few, it would  seem",  and were  upon inferior animals—the
 latter were numerous and upon man.   In London the contractions were
 feeble, "though  perceptible to the naked eye"—in  New Orleans they
 were powerful, carrying heavy weights during flexions add  extensions
 against gravity and  against a leverage of great  force ;  upon the whole
 exceeding  the  former as much as  the Mississippi River  exceeds the
 Thames.
   In making these  statements  I indulge a hope (an illusion^it may be)
 that critics, whether from contempt, or charity, or justice to the writer of
 this monograph,  will perform the  experiments herein  mentioned,  before
 animadverting too  strongly upon  its doctrines.  The  experiments  are
 easily performed.   Is it right to throw the great reputation of my oppo-
 nents in the scale against my facts ?  In  such a case, laboring as I  do
 con amore, whilst every capital in Europe  swarms  with  salaried pro-
 fessors, who are teaching neurological  doctrines quite opposite, the ar-
gumenlum ad  hominem is unworthy  of  Mrs. Caudle herself.  It  is pre-
 cisely  the great reputation  of our masters which, as history teaches, is
 likely  to impede the march of science in many instances.
                        APPENDIX.

  I have, this day (Feb. 9th, 1846), for the first time seen Dr. Marshall
Hall's Memoirs on the Nervous System (4to., plates, pp. 113, London)—
being somewhat later than his lectures upon the same subject as quoted
above, and differing in nothing but a slight re-marshalling of sections and
sub-sections.   No  one can  regret more than I to speak of a writer so 
37
  justly distinguished (independent of any reflex theory) as  Dr. Hall,  in
  any other  terms than commendation, but as his experiments seem  to
  have a hearing more or less in conflict with  mine,  I must  run the risk
  of being charged with temerity, if not arrogance, in the cause of what
  1 suppose  to be  the truth ;  this  may  not  be good policy,  but it  is  at
  least honest and warranted by the occasion.   I rely fully on the authen-
  ticity of his facts (many of which have probably  no application to the
  physiology of man).   1 only differ from  him in their interpretation and
  value.  At page 112 of the above  named  work, he gives  what he em-
  phatically  calls a recapitulation of "The whole of his discoveries ;"  "dis-
  coveries"  as  he declares, " entirely due  to him."  Such statements,
  involving priority of discovery, may often seem sterile to the reader, but
  they are not necessarily either unreasonably  selfish or egotistic, but come
  under the golden rule which " renders to Caesar that which is Caesar's."
  " First discovery; the distinction of the excito-motory property  from sen-
  sation,  volition,  instinct, and all the  functions of  the  cerebrum or
  mind."    Now,  is not this an   assumption, implying (possibly  truly)
  that when  the head  is chopped  off,  sensation,  volition, and the  entire
  mind, are  completely chopped off likewise ?  Ignorant  as we are  in
> such matters,  until some decapitated gentleman shall arise  from the
  grave to explain  further concerning the  feelings and the motions of his
  headless trunk,  what can be gained by subdividing all the  muscular
  actions  in  this  same  trunk,  after " the amputation of the encephalic
  extremity," which, a learned author informs us very gravely, " cannot be
  done in  the living subject  without stopping respiration and producing
  other inconveniences, which  under the  operation are happily  inadmis-
  sible."   "  Second discovery ; the  distinction of this property  from the
  vis insita,  or irritability of the muscular fibre."   Is not  this a distinc-
  tion without  a  difference—one  that runs  through all  of Dr.  Hall's
  books  on  the reflex  theory ?   He  labors  hard—and  it were easy  to
  show unsuccessfully—to  prove that his doctrine has nothing to do with
  the old  discovery of irritability; yet he has everywhere admitted that
  they may  and do exist simultaneously.   That vague mass of pheno-
  mena designated  by  the vis  insita has  been  baptized under another
  name ;  a theoretical name which implied no theory, where no theory  is
  available.   Repudiating the vis insita, he claims for the reflex function ;
  " the principle of equilibrium and tone in the whole muscular system,
  and the principle which presides over the orifices and sphincters of the
  internal  canals"—(p. 38);—all  of which, according to him,  cease as
  soon as the  spinal  cord is  disintegrated,  leaving  the muscles  " lax,
 fiaccid, without resiliency, shapeless" (passim)—none of which, I will add,
  ever happens with human cadavera, in lat.  29°  67' N.,  long. 90° T
  W.; though I  cannot speak for the meridian  of Greenwich, long. 0°,
  lat. 51° 29' N.   " Third, the distinction of this property as a function of
  the spinal marrow.   Fourth,  the identification of the excito-motory pro-
  perty with  the  motor power  exercised  by the  spinal marrow.   Fifth,
  the excito-motory property  acts  in an incident,  retrograde, and  reflex
  course, when stimulated mechanically or by galvanism, or by the natural
  stimuli in the  living animal."   " These," he adds,  "are all the points
  certainly and entirely due to him."
    " The spinal cord is the sole organic seat  of this reflex function, and
  in  an especial manner of the emotions, passions, and appetites" (pp.
  96, 71).  Let psychologists  who have the care and cure  of souls, and 
38
phrenologists, who perform the same offices for our cranial bumps, consi-
der this matter  well.  Mr. G. Combe has mapped off" thirty-five phreno-
logical organs ;  two reflective, twelve  perceptive, leaving no less than
twenty-one for  the  passions, propensities  and sentiments—all absorbed
by the spinal marrow, according to Dr.  Hall,—a goodly number, seeing
their unruly character and unfortunate location, to use an Americanism.
Dr. Hall might as well claim all Oregon as all the emotions and passions
for the spine.    Phrenology  sustained  itself with  difficulty  in upper
realms of-intellection, but, with more ease as soon as it dipped its wing
in the lower, the animal,  the  philoprogenitive, the amative, the cerebel-
lar territories.   The reflex science, as if by enchantment, transfers the
whole  of the passions  and  the mysteries of generation to  the spinal
region,  throwing, at least,  a suspicion upon  the  stability  of human
knowledge; though Dr.  Hall maintains that his  " System  is  scarcely
liable  to  error  ; its  originality is  obvious."—(P.  53.)   " Day follows
night,  and night the dying day,"—not  a pleiad  has ever wandered from
the constellation of Taurus,  while medical systems disappear  like  the
banks ofthe Mississippi, which often  shoot noiselessly away,  with house
and builder many a fathom below the turbid waves.  Sic  transit gloria
mundi.
   Dr.  Hall has given a  number  of  plates or maps, exhibiting, not  the
phrenological  regions,  nor  yet  the.  fantastic  travels  of a  delirious
dreamer, but the devious windings, and marchings,  and  counter-march-
ings of this romantic  reflex potentate,  the  veritable  Don  Quixote of
physiology.  Contraction by percussion in the manner I  have described,
would  be wholly excluded from irritability,  as  defined  by Dr.  H., who
says, " The movements of irritability are the result of the immediate ap-
plication of a stimulus to the  nervo-muscular  fibre  itself."—(P. 31.)  I
affirm, that a  blow on the skin with an intervening layer of  fat an inch
or more thick,  is as effectual, perhaps more so, in exciting contractions
than one immediaLely laid on the naked fibres themselves.
   There may be some  convenience, if not philosophy, in dividing mus-
cular contractility  into voluntary, involuntary, and mixed—but  to divide
 it into psychical, galvanic, cerebral,  reflex, vital, irritable, and the  like,
 with a view to establish  species of a scientific  character, to tally sepa-
 rate and different  from each  other, is perfectly idle.   Since the meta-
 physics of Neurology can  furnish nothing better, let us appeal to com-
 mon sense for an illustration.   The personator of the melancholy Ham-
 let, for example, in speaking of

             The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
             That flesh is heir to,—

 would probably put his  hand on his breast.   The next day the tragedian
 falls sick of a  cardiac  disease, and  puts his hand to the same place to
 point  out a physical ache.  The day following, being comatose and insen-
 sible, he probably places his hand in the same way.  He dies.   I strike
 the biceps, and as in the tragedy, as in the sickness, he carries his  hand
 to his breast.   Here many circumstances have  changed—muscular ac-
 tion is modified ; yet who will prove that this action itself is not essen-
 tially the same in  nature, though  excited  differently ?   Haller would
 say—Vis insita !—C. Bell, Anterior roots !—Hall, Reflex  action !—The
 electricians, electricity ! galvanism!—The vitalists, vitality !—The  che- 
39
mists, chemistry !   Omitting, the third flexion in this series, the two first
are such as would be  denominated psychical, because  excited  by the
mind, and the last would be called by some other name, according to the
operator's theory ;  but in neither case do we know whether the essential
nature of both be  the  same  or different; and we deceive ourselves in
supposing that the name explains the thing.   If the post-mortem  con-
traction were called stickical, because excited by a stick, it would be a-
good an  explanation of  the phenomena,  as to call the ante-mortem  cons
traction  psychical.   A celebrated physician, so the story runs, in finish-
ing a course of lectures on muscular motion, said,  " Gentlemen,  I have
told you all that is known upon this subject, and now, if you understand
one jot of the cause of muscular motion, you know more than I do."
   It is not intended on  this  occasion to say anything upon the material-
izing tendency of  neurological speculations  of the day, though it would
not be difficult to  show  that there is some  credulity, not to say  fanati-
cism, in proclaiming that the  feeling, thinking, willing, hoping, fearing,
deserving, conscious entity, called the mind, is  identical with its gross
organs, whether muscular or nervous, spinal or cerebral.  And as to its
locale, it may not  be altogether  philosophical to advocate the  exclusive
claim  of the baek, or the  stomach, or  the  heart, or the head.   The
sooner another Thomas  Reid  shall  appear with  his  massive logic to de-
stroy the snags  and obstructions which  are choking  up  the  stream of
mental  philosophy, the  better it will be,  likewise, for physiology in  gen-
eral, and more especially for that part of it—now the larger half—which
is claimed for the spinal cord—" the sole seat  of all the emotions,  pas-
 sions,  and appetites /"  according to the Reflex School.