Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: only possessed odor but were irritants for mucous surfaces generally and thus without reference to olfaction could call forth vigorous responses. Magendie, however, claimed that his results were not dependent upon these substances, but could be demonstrated by the use of non- irritants, such as lavender oil. Magendie's opinion that the trigeminal nerve was the nerve of olfaction was opposed almost from the beginning. Eschricht in 1825 pointed to numerous cases of persons who were anosmic in consequence of the absence of the olfactory nerve or of its degeneration. Bishop in 1833 described a case of paralysis of the trigeminal nerve in which there was, however, full retention of olfaction. Picht (1829) and Duges (1838), both of whom were incapable of olfaction in the ordinary sense of the word, were nevertheless easily stimulated through their nasal membranes by the vapor of acetic ether, or of ammonia. Valentin (1839) found that a normal rabbit would sniff the body of a dead one, but that a rabbit whose olfactory nerves had been cut would not thus respond. Schiff (1859) experimented on five pups, in four of which the olfactories were severed, the fifth being retained in a normal condition as a control. After recovery from the operation, the four pups in which the nerves had been cut were unable to find the mother's nipples, and did not distinguish between a man and the mother though they turned their heads away and sneezed when ammonia or ether was administered. Acetic acid stimulated them only when its vapor was very concentrated. These and many other similar results completely overthrew Magendie's contention and showed that, though the trigeminal endings were concerned with the reception of what may becalled irritants, true olfaction was accomplished only through the olfactory...