Page:The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1876.djvu/676

66(S MoDonnkm, — Physiology of the Spin-al Cord.

This little work comprises two essays and four lectures on various questions relating to the physiology and pathology o the spinal cord.

The first paper is entitled a " Critical Essay on the Physiology and Pathology of the Spinal Cord," and is chiefly occupied in a survey of the celebrated experiments on that part of the nervous system, by Dr. Brown-Sequard, who, it appears, was aided » Dr. McDonnell, in performing his experiments during the lectures and demonstrations of the former, in the city of Dublin. They were not only repeated by our author for purposes of verification, but their correctness was still further made man- ifest by microscopical examination of the spinal cords 6; the animals he had operated on during his public lectures, and which our author had taken the precaution to preserve. Dr. McDonnell adds the results of various experiments of his own, and of a study of the literature of the subject.

The principal portion of the first paper is devoted to a review of the main points in the progress of the anatomy and physiology of the spinal cord, arriving finally at the researches and discov- eries of Dr. Brown-Sequard, in relation to the nervous system, a consideration of which under various relations, forms the bulk of the present volume. But it is to be presumed that the ma- jority of our readers have already an independent acquaintance with the writings of that eminent physiologist, and it will be unnecessary, therefore, to follow our author closely in the pres- ent notice.

Although the work bears the date 1875, yet we have no means for knowing just when its- matter was put in its present shape, but from the fact that a number of important points in relation to the anatomy and physiology of the spinal cord and vaso-mo- tor uervous system, are not mentioned, as they should have been in it work of so late date, we judge it must have been prepared sometime ago.

In discussing the views of Schroeder Van der Kolk v. functions of the gray matter of the spinal cord, Dr. McDonnell admits that not only do the sensory nerves convey impressions, but that they are "sensitive to pain." But this is surely an in- correct statement as it stands, however different the real view of