Effects of Temperature on Reflex Action

Abstract

I DO not know if I quite understand Mr. Lewes's objections to my little article in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology. He attributes the absence of movements in the case in question to a loss of sensibility to temperature. At first his statement reads as if the loss of sensibility to temperature were due to the removal of the brain. But he cannot mean this, because the whole of my paper starts from the fact that when the toes alone are exposed to gradually heated water, the leg is withdrawn. If he means that the sensibility to temperature alone is destroyed or depressed by the exposure of the whole body to the gradually heated water, and the other “sensibilities” left intact, I do not see how my argument touching the difference between the entire and the brainless frog is affected at all by a limitation of the stimulus to one particular kind. Moreover, in the last observation recorded in my paper it is expressly stated that in the later stages of heating the absence or diminution of reaction towards chemical as well as thermal stimuli was observed. Gradually heated water acts as a very slight stimulus, sulphuric acid (even dilute) is a very strong stimulus; and that the latter suddenly applied, as in the experiment of Goltz referred to by Mr. Lewes, should call forth a reflex action at a time when the former is unable to do so, in no way contradicts my explanation of the absence of movements. A red-hot iron might have been substituted for the sulphuric acid with identical results.