Does it still feel? and is the motion still the
result of the volition?
That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted at the circumstance, there
seems to be no room to doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that
having once decapitated a frog, the animal suddenly bounded from the
table, a movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He
then returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its
foot again, the frog again "resenting the stimulation." He then thrust
a needle down the spinal cord. "The limbs are now flaccid," observed the
experimenter; "we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes
will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move." Here is
where congratulations can come in for _la grenouille_. That frog being
concluded, the lecturer continued:
I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium and remove the
brain and medulla oblongata. . . . I thrust a pin through the nose and
hang the animal thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent
legs without any difficulty.
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