The doctrine of human automatism : a lecture (with additions) delivered before The Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 7th March, 1875 / by W. B. Carpenter.

  • William Benjamin Carpenter
Date:
1875
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The doctrine of human automatism : a lecture (with additions) delivered before The Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 7th March, 1875 / by W. B. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    this change a “movement of molecules ;” but it is nothing a more than a name for fe Sf the action excited there, : ) of the nature of which we know very little. I do not think that this expression is really very much better than the old doctrine of “vibrations” | put forth by Hartley , more than a century ago. The change thus excited produces a converse ac- tion in the motor nerves which go to the muscles, and thus calls forth the combined muscular move- ment of which I have spoken. This is a typi- Fig. 1.—Unpzr Surracz or Bratn.— cal example of what the a. Medulla oblongata, cut off from physiologist terms the spinal cord; 6, pons varolii; ¢, %; Sule infundibulum; d, portion of the eflex action. , convoluted surface of the cerebrum ; The whole Spinal Cord e, portion of the same laid open, is a centre of “ reflex shewing the sa PL ae a a action,” in virtue of the, rey or gang an t wed ds cour olution aaaanentat a Peas patie? ganglionis Aaah substance; /, cerebellum; 1, olfac- ter it contains, in addi- tory ganglion; 2, optic nerves; 3-9, tion to the white strands successive cranial nerves. which form the connec- tion between the spinal nerves and the brain ; and this grey matter is present in different parts of the cord in different amounts, in proportion to the size of the nerves connected with each. Hach ordinary spinal nerve contains both sensory and motor fibres, bound up in the same trunk, but these are separate at its roots (fig. 3); and a part of each set of fibres has its centre in the grey matter of the spinal cord itself, whilst another part is continued into its white strands. Although, however, we speak of “sensory” fibres, we do not mean that impressions on them always call forth sensations. For in the case of many involuntary acts, a certain impression is made on the sensory nerve,
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