Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/749

Rh These movements are performed with the utmost steadiness and precision, and you may vary the position of your hand, and the frog, so long as you are reasonably slow in your movements, will work backward and forward like a clock. And what is still more remarkable is this, that, if you put him on a table, and put a book between him and the light, and give him a little jog behind, he will jump—take a long jump, very possibly—but he won't jump against the book; he will jump to the right or to the left, but he will get out of the way, showing that, although he is absolutely insensible to ordinary impressions of light, there is still a something which passes through the sensory nerve, acts upon the machinery of his nervous system, and causes it to adapt itself to the proper action.

I need not say that since those days of commencing anatomical science when criminals were handed over to the doctors, we cannot make experiments on human beings, but sometimes they are made for us, and made in a very remarkable manner. That operation called war is a great series of physiological experiments, and sometimes it happens that these physiological experiments bear very remarkable fruit. A French soldier, a sergeant, was wounded at the battle of Bareilles. The man was shot in what we call the left parietal bone. The bullet, I presume, glanced off, but it fractured the bone. He had enough vigor left to send his bayonet through the Prussian that shot him. Then he wandered a few hundred yards out of the village, where he was picked up and taken to the hospital, where he remained some time. When he came to himself, as usual in such cases of injury, he was paralyzed on the opposite side of the body, that is to say, the right arm and the right leg were completely paralyzed. That state of things lasted, I think, the better part of two years, but sooner or later he recovered from it, and now he is able to walk about with activity, and only by careful measurement can any difference between the two sides of his body be ascertained. At present this man lives two lives, a normal life and an abnormal life. In his normal life he is perfectly well, cheerful, and a capital hospital attendant, does all his work well, and is a respectable, well-conducted man. That normal life lasts for about seven-and-twenty days, or thereabouts, out of every month; but for a day or two in each month—generally at intervals of about that time—he passes into another life, suddenly, and without warning or intimation. In this life he is still active, goes about just as usual, and is to all appearance just the same man as before; goes to bed and undresses himself, gets up, makes his cigarette and smokes it, and eats and drinks. But in this condition he neither sees, nor hears, nor tastes, nor smells, nor is he conscious of any thing whatever, and has only one sense-organ in a state of activity—viz., that of touch, which is exceedingly delicate. If you put an obstacle in his way he knocks against it, feels it, and goes to the one side. If you push him in any direction he goes straight on, illustrating, as well as he can, the first law of motion. You see I have