Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/288

276 about the height of the nipple, with the point of a scalpel, over a space of nearly four inches, without making any pressure on the muscles lying beneath. We immediately saw the great pectoral muscle, then the biceps, then the anterior brachial, successively and quickly contract. The result was a movement of approach of the whole arm toward the trunk, with rotation inward of the limb, and half flexion of the forearm upon the arm, a true defensive movement, which threw the hand forward toward the chest as far as the pit of the stomach."

These spontaneous exhibitions of life in a corpse are trifles compared with those excited by means of certain stimulants, particularly of electricity. Aldini, in 1802, subjected two criminals, beheaded at Bologna, to the action of a powerful battery. Influenced by the current, the facial muscles contracted, producing the effect of horrid grimaces. All the limbs were seized with convulsive movements; the bodies seemed to feel the stir of resurrection, and to make efforts to rise. The springs of the system retained the power of answering the electric stimulus for several hours after beheading. A few years later, at Glasgow, Ure made some equally noted experiments on the body of a criminal that had remained more than an hour hanging on the gallows. One of the poles of a battery of 700 pairs having been connected with the spinal marrow below the nape of the neck, and the other brought in contact with the heel, the leg, before bent back on itself, was thrust violently forward, almost throwing down one of the assistants, who had hard work to keep it in place. When one of the poles was placed on the seventh rib, and the other on one of the nerves of the neck, the chest rose and fell, and the abdomen repeated the bike movement, as takes place in respiration. On touching a nerve of the eyebrow at the same time with the head, the facial muscles contracted. "Wrath, terror, despair, anguish, and frightful grins, blended in horrible expression on the assassin's countenance."

The most remarkable instance of a momentary reappearance of vital properties, not in the whole organism, but in the head alone, is the famous experiment suggested by Legallois, and carried out for the first time in 1858 by M. Brown-Séquard. This skilful physiologist beheads a dog, taking pains to make the section below the point at which the vertebral arteries enter their bony sheath. Ten minutes afterward he sends the galvanic current into the different parts of the head thus severed from its body, without producing any result of movement. He then fits to the four arteries, the extremities of which appear in the cutting of the neck, little pipes connected by tubes with a reservoir full of fresh oxygenated blood, and guides the injection of this blood into the vessels of the brain. Immediately irregular motions of the eyes and the facial muscles occur, succeeded by the appearance of regular harmonious contractions, seeming to be prompted by the will. The head has regained life. The motions continue to be performed during a quarter of an hour, while the injection of blood