The nervous system, anatomical and physiological : in which the functions of the various parts of the brain are for the first time assigned: and to which is prefixed some account of the author's earliest discoveries, of which the more recent doctrine of Bell, Magendi, etc. is shown to be one.

  • Alexander Walker
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nervous system, anatomical and physiological : in which the functions of the various parts of the brain are for the first time assigned: and to which is prefixed some account of the author's earliest discoveries, of which the more recent doctrine of Bell, Magendi, etc. is shown to be one. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    however, the Doctor calls ' the two roots of nerves of each half of the spinal marrow, namely, the anterior and posterior;' and asserts, as is seen above, that these identical roots of each half of the spinal marrow, ' go to different parts of the body!' Every anatomist and every anatomical work declares that from the roots no twig proceeds either to skin or muscles ; and if it were not obvious that the Doctor had mis- taken the branches for the roots, I should be apt to think that in his ' careful examination of the structure of the spinal mass of nerves,' the Doctor had refuted the whole of them. I have now to mention, that even some of those anatomists who succeeded Willis conjec- tured that there were cerebral and cerebellic nerves. They indeed only conjectured this; and they, moreover, erred by distinguishing them into vital and animal. The vital nerves, said they, are chiefly derived from the cerebellum, and the animal from the cerebrum. [Sir C. Bell's doctrine of 1811 was absolutely no more than this!I/] They have believed, says Haller, that several nerves have roots partly from the cere- bellum. But Haller objects that the fifth pair [tri- facial] arising, as he says, from the cerebellum, is appropriated both to sense and motion. He shows also, that some of those nerves which they be- lieve to have some origin from the cerebellum, have nothing to do with vitality ; and he ad-
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