Article ID: CBB001320052

Limits of Life and Death: Legallois's Decapitation Experiments (2013)

unapi

Cheung, Tobias (Author)


Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 46
Pages: 283-313


Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Part of a special issue on vivisection
Language: English

In Expériences sur le principe de la vie (Chez D'Hautel, Paris, 1812 ), Jean César Legallois, a French physician and physiologist, explored the basic regulatory framework of vital processes of warm-blooded animals. He decapitated rabbits and cut off their limbs in order to search for a seat of life that is located in the spinal cord. Through ligatures and artificial pulmonary insufflations, he kept the trunks of rabbits alive for some minutes. Legallois thus criticized models of organic order in which the spinal cord only mediates, like a gross nerve, between the brain and the body. He identified a certain section of the spinal cord that influences respiratory acts, and he also established a connection between the spinal cord and the movement of the heart. Further on, Legallois envisioned experiments that would extend the life-time of headless trunks through the infusion of arterial blood.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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Article Guerrini, Anita; Meli, Domenico Bertoloni (2013) Introduction: Experimenting with Animals in the Early Modern Era. Journal of the History of Biology (p. 167). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001320052/

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Authors & Contributors
Shmuely, Shira Dina
Swanson, Larry W.
Stark, James F.
Simon, Jonathan
Schickore, Jutta
Schmidgen, Henning
Concepts
Physiology
Animal experimentation
Experiments and experimentation
Medicine
Vivisection
Physicians; doctors
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century
21st century
17th century
Places
France
United States
Great Britain
England
Italy
Germany
Institutions
Institut Pasteur, Paris
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