Experiments on cerebral localization.—Archiv. Ital.
Author of “Di una reazione apparamente nera delle cellule nervose ottenuta col bicloruro di mercurio.”—Arch. p. l. scienze mediche, Vol. III., 1879, N. 11.
Goltz, Friedrich. Direct. of Inst. for Exper. Physiol., Strasburg; formerly prosector Univ. Königsberg, Prussia.
Author of “Beiträge zur Lehre von den Functionen der Nervencentren des Frosches,” Berlin, 1869; “Verrichtungen des Grosshirns,” 1881; “Wider die Humanaster,” 1883; “Ueber die physiologische Bedeutung der Bogengänge des Ohrlabyrinths,” Pflüger’s Archiv., Vol. III., p. 172.
“I owe the fundamental idea of my method of experimentation to the memory of my experience as prosector at Königsberg. I have often dissected out the arteries of the brain filled with torpid matter.… I resolved to try whether it would be possible to rinse out the living brain and spare the larger veins. The very first effort was so successful that it encouraged me to proceed, and that was the origin of this work.… All my experiments were made on dogs which I chloroformed before the operation. To bare the skull, I generally made first a cut in the centre and separated the skin on one side, so that the muscles of the temples were visible. Then according to the experiment I wished to make, a portion of the muscle was cut away to expose the place in the bone where the hole was to be bored. According to the requirements of the case, one, two, or still more holes were bored, and after making a cut in the head skin, the brain matter was rinsed out. I generally used spring water, heated to the temperature of the blood.… At all events till now, as far as my knowledge of the literature of this subject goes, no one has succeeded in making such extensive destruction of the brain and still preserving life. I have succeeded in a series of experiments made at different intervals, in so seriously injuring one hemisphere, that all the circumvolutions that touched the skull had disappeared. The animal lived for weeks with its crippled brain, and served for many observations.”—Verrichtungen des Grosshirns, pp. 3-8. (A work dedicated to his “English Friends.”)
“It is not often that two physiologists agree in matters relating to the physiology of the brain.”—Ibid., p. 9.
“I do not by any means claim that my researches can be of any value in themselves for the pathology of the human brain. Let the pathologists continue steadily to collect facts, then the apparent contradictions between the experiments on animals and the observations at the bedside will soon be reconciled.”—Ibid., p. 176.
“The fact that both in tortoises and in toads, the extirpation of the cerebellum and the superior two-thirds of the bulbus does not abolish the sense of equilibrium, proves that the too widely generalised theory of Goltz which localises this sense in the cerebellum, as also that of Vulpian, who in the inferior vertebrates, places the seat of this sense in the part corresponding to the annular protuberance of the superior vertebrates, are both equally inexact.—Florence, June, 1883.”—Fano, “Recherches expérimentales sur un nouveau centre automatique dans le tractus bulbo-spinal.”—Arch. ital. de Biol., Vol. III., p. 368.
“It is self evident, that Goltz’s experience, when quoted against the localizations of functions in the cortex of the brain is of no worth.”… (p. 11). “Professor Goltz’s assumption that irritation sets up inhibitory processes, having their seat in the cerebrum, which cause, through paralysis of certain centres situated in the cerebellum and its connections, all the non-permanent disturbances,—this assumption is inadmissible” (p. 13).—Munk, Ueber die Functionen der Grosshirn-Rinde.