Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3 / Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility

by George John Romanes

Although this work was begun over twenty years ago, and then yielded negative results, it was only within the last decade that I resumed it more systematically, and under the tutelage of Brown-Séquard himself. During the last two years, however, the experiments have been so much interrupted by illness that even now the research is far from complete. Therefore I will here confine myself to a tabular statement of the results as far as they have hitherto gone, on the understanding that, in so far as they are negative or doubtful, I am not yet prepared to announce them as final.

We may take Brown-Séquard's propositions in his own order, as already given on page [104].

1st. Appearance of epilepsy in animals born of parents which had been rendered epileptic by an injury to the spinal cord.

2nd. Appearance of epilepsy also in animals born of parents which had been rendered epileptic by section of the sciatic nerve.

I did not repeat these experiments with a view to producing epilepsy, because, as above stated, they had been already and sufficiently corroborated in this respect. But I repeated many times the experiments of dividing the sciatic nerve for the purpose of testing the statements made later on in paragraphs 7 and 8, and observed that it almost always had the effect of producing epilepsy in the animal thus operated upon—and this of a peculiar kind, the chief characteristics of which may here be summarized. The epileptiform habit does not supervene until some considerable time after the operation; it is then transitory, lasting only for some weeks or months. While the habit endures the fits never occur spontaneously, but only as a result of irritating a small area of skin behind the ear on the same side of the body as that on which the sciatic nerve had been divided. Effectual irritation may be either mechanical (such as gentle pinching), electrical, or, though less certainly, thermal. The area of skin in question, soon after the epileptiform habit supervenes, and during all the time that it lasts, swarms with lice of the kind which infest guinea-pigs—i.e. the lice congregate in this area, on account, I think, of the animal being there insensitive, and therefore not disturbing its parasites in that particular spot; otherwise it would presumably throw itself into fits by scratching that spot. On removing the skin from the area in question, no kind or degree of irritation supplied to the subjacent tissue has any effect in producing a fit. A fit never lasts for more than a very few minutes, during which the animal is unconscious and convulsed, though not with any great violence. The epileptiform habit is but rarely transmitted to progeny. Most of these observations are in accordance with those previously made by Brown-Séquard, and also by others who have repeated his experiments under this heading. I can have no doubt that the injury of the sciatic nerve or spinal cord produces a change in some of the cerebral centres, and that it is this change—whatever it is and in whatever part of the brain it takes place—which causes the remarkable phenomena in question.

3rd. A change in the shape of the ear in animals born of parents in which such a change was the effect of a division of the cervical sympathetic nerve.

4th. Partial closure of the eyelids in animals born of parents in which that state of the eyelids had been caused either by section of the cervical sympathetic nerve, or the removal of the superior cervical ganglion.

I have not succeeded in corroborating these results. It must be added, however, that up to the time of going to press my experiments on this, the easiest branch of the research, have been too few fairly to prove a negative.

5th. Exophthalmia in animals born of parents in which an injury to the restiform body had produced that protrusion of the eyeball.... In these animals, modified by heredity, the two eyes generally protruded, although in the parents usually only one showed exophthalmia, the lesion having been made in most cases only on one of the corpora restiformia.

I have fully corroborated the statement that injury to a particular spot of the restiform body is quickly followed by a marked protrusion of the eyeball on the same side. I have also had many cases in which some of the progeny of parents thus affected have shown considerable protrusion of the eyeballs on both sides, and this seemingly abnormal protrusion has been occasionally transmitted to the next generation. Nevertheless, I am far from satisfied that this latter fact is anything more than an accidental coincidence. For I have never seen the so-called exophthalmia of progeny exhibited in so high a degree as it occurs in the parents as an immediate result of the operation, while, on examining any large stock of normal guinea-pigs, there is found a considerable amount of individual variation in regard to prominence of eyeballs. Therefore, while not denying that the obviously abnormal amount of protrusion due to the operation may be inherited in lesser degrees, and thus may be the cause of the unusual degree of prominence which is sometimes seen in the eyeballs of progeny born of exophthalmic parents, I am unable to affirm so important a conclusion on the basis supplied by these experiments.

6th. Haematoma and dry gangrene of the ears in animals born of parents in which these ear-alterations had been caused by an injury to the restiform body.