§ 4. The admirable physiological investigations of Dr. Brown-Séquard afford brilliant examples of the application of the Inductive Methods to a class of inquiries in which, for reasons which will presently be given, direct induction takes place under peculiar difficulties and disadvantages. As one of the most apt instances, I select his speculation (in the proceedings of the Royal Society for May 16, 1861) on the relations between muscular irritability, cadaveric rigidity, and putrefaction.
The law which Dr. Brown-Séquard’s investigation tends to establish, is the following: “The greater the degree of muscular irritability at the time of death, the later the cadaveric rigidity sets in, and the longer it lasts, and the later also putrefaction appears, and the slower it progresses.” One would say at first sight that the method here required must be that of Concomitant Variations. But this is a delusive appearance, arising from the circumstance that the conclusion to be tested is itself a fact of concomitant variations. For the establishment of that fact any of the Methods may be put in requisition, and it will be found that the fourth Method, though really employed, has only a subordinate place in this particular investigation.
The evidences by which Dr. Brown-Séquard establishes the law may be enumerated as follows:
1st. Paralyzed muscles have greater irritability than healthy muscles. Now, paralyzed muscles are later in assuming the cadaveric rigidity than healthy muscles, the rigidity lasts longer, and putrefaction sets in later, and proceeds more slowly.
Both these propositions had to be proved by experiment; and for the experiments which prove them, science is also indebted to Dr. Brown-Séquard. The former of the two—that paralyzed muscles have greater irritability than healthy muscles—he ascertained in various ways, but most decisively by “comparing the duration of irritability in a paralyzed muscle and in the corresponding healthy one of the opposite side, while they are both submitted to the same excitation.” He “often found, in experimenting in that way, that the paralyzed muscle remained irritable twice, three times, or even four times as long as the healthy one.” This is a case of induction by the Method of Difference. The two limbs, being those of the same animal, were presumed to differ in no circumstance material to the case except the paralysis, to the presence and absence of which, therefore, the difference in the muscular irritability was to be