Whytt decided to prove his theory through experimentation. He replicated Stephen Hales' experiment that consisted of probing and examining the response of limbs in decapitated frogs. In Whytt's version of the experiment, he inserted a hot wire through the spine of the decapitated frog and observed that when the spine of the frog was destroyed, no form of pricking or cutting of the frog's limb elicited a response. If the frog's spine stayed intact as it did in Hales' experiment, the limbs continued to respond to the pricking and cutting. Additionally, Whytt tested to see if a response could still be created if certain sections of the spinal cord remained intact. The results show that as long as the spinal cord is partially undamaged, small responses in the limbs can still be produced.