Idee einer neuen Hirnanatomie (1811) : Originaltext und Übersetzung / Charles Bell ; mit Einleitung herausgegeben von Erich Ebstein.

  • Charles Bell
Date:
1911
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Idee einer neuen Hirnanatomie (1811) : Originaltext und Übersetzung / Charles Bell ; mit Einleitung herausgegeben von Erich Ebstein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    we become acquainted with the various sensations, can itself be insensible; but the consideration of the wide dijfference of function betwixt a part destined to receive impressions, and a part which is the seat of intellect, reconciles us to the pheno- menon. It would be rather strange to find, that there were no distinction exhibited in experiments on parts evidently so difierent in function as the organs of the senses, the nerves, and the brain. Whether there be a difference in the matter of the nervous system, or a distinction in organization, is of little importance to our enquiries, when it is proved that their essential properties are different, though their union and co- operation be necessary to the complection of their function — the developement of the faculties by impulse from external matter. All ideas originate in the brain: the operation producing them is the remote effect of an agitation or impression on the extremities of the nerves of sense; directly they [35] are consequences of a change or operation in the proper organ of the sense which constitutes a part of the brain, and over these organs, once brought into action by external impulse, the mind has influence. It is provided^ that the extremities of the nerves of the senses shall be susceptible each of certain qualities in matter; and betwixt the impression of the outward sense, as it may be called, and the exercise of the internal organ, there is established a connection by which the ideas excited have a permanent correspondence with the qualities of bodies which surround us. ' From the cineritious matter, which is chiefly external, and forming the surface of the cerebrum; and from the grand center of medullary matter of the cerebrum, what are called the crura descend. These are fasciculated processes of the cere- brum, from which go off the nerves of motion, the nerves governing the muscular frame. Through the nerves of sense, the sensorium receives impressions, but the will is expressed through [36] the medium of the nerves of motion. The secret operations of the bodily frame, and the connections which unite the parts of the body into a system, are through the cerebellum and nerves proceeding from it.