Essai sur la Psycho-physiologie des Monstres Humains

Abstract

THE substance of two-thirds of this book has already appeared in various scientific and medical journals. The last ninety-four pages are devoted to the researches of other workers in the same field. The first of the two monsters examined by the authors was an anencephalous male child, which was continuously under observation during the thirty-nine hours of its extra-uterine life. An examination post mortem revealed the complete absence of cerebral hemispheres, cerebellum, pons, restiform body, inferior and accessory olives, and pyramidal tract. The monster's apparent lack of taste and smell is devoid of theoretical interest, as the authors omit to mention whether the trigeminal and olfactory nerves were developed. Certainly.they failed to find traces of the third and fourth cranial nerves, coincident with the lack of which the infant presented exophthalmos, external sqilint, dilatation of the pupil, absence of the pupil-reflex, and ptosis. The cerebral hemispheres were replaced by # protruding cystic tumour; throughout the brain, and cord the ependyma, neuroglia and ventricles were much hypertrophied,. and atrophied degenerated nerve-cells were met with, especially in the cranial: region, together with much vascular engorgement and dia-pedesis. In order to explain the yet healthy state of the retinae and optic nerves, the authors conclude that the cerebral hemispheres at first developed normally, and were only later affected by “an inflammatory process of an infectious nature,” which produced the anencephaly and other abnormalities. But the oauthors' interpretation of their histological investigations is far from convincing. It is hardly a matter for surprise to find haemorrhages and wandering leucocytes in the profoundly disturbed nervous system of a cold, moribund, cyanotic creature that breajhed only about eight times a minute, and then with a well-marked Cheyne-Stokes rhythm. Moreover, some secondary degeneration may have followed from the complete absence of the pyramidal tract. The authors allude to an insufficiency of myelinisation and to the abnormal proportions between white and grey matter. But these statements, and the rather indifferent plates and illustrations upon which they are founded, would have carried greater conviction, were it certain that the authors (of whom one is an experimental psychologist and the other a hospital resident physician) are perfectly familiar with the corresponding appearances in a healthy newly-born babe.

Essai sur la Psycho-physiologie des Monstres Humains.

By N. Vaschide Cl. Vurpas. Pp. 294. (Paris: F. R. de Rudeval, n.d.) Price 5 francs.