Review of Flourens on the nervous system : review of Vrolik on the Chimpanzee : review of Albers, Kerst &c on morbid anatomy [incomplete].
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Review of Flourens on the nervous system : review of Vrolik on the Chimpanzee : review of Albers, Kerst &c on morbid anatomy [incomplete]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
3/22 page 365
![1843.] °f Verlebrated Animals. which takes place around and within them.” The term perception, to which we are accustomed to attach a higher notion, is the one by which French physiologists usually designate what we understand by sensation, or the consciousness of an impression. The following is M. Flourens’s own general estimate of the tendency of his inquiiies. It is to be re- membered that they were contemporaneous with those of Sir C. Bell, and that in the following summary, therefore, these are only alluded to where they bear upon the author’s own : “ It was earlv perceived that the nervous system is at the same time the organ by which the animal receives sensations (impressions), the organ by which it executes or determines its movements, the organ by which it perceives and wills. But does the faculty of willing and perceiving reside in the same parts with the property offeeling ? Does the property of feeling (receiving impressions) reside in the same parts with the property of movement? Are thinking, feeling, moving, but one property, or are they three distinct properties, having separate organs for their manifestation ? These important questions, debated during so many ages, still remained for solution. “ My experiments showed, in a most decisive manner, that there are three es- sentially distinct properties in the nervous system; that of perceiving and willing, that of feeling (receiving impressions), and that of moving; that these three pro- perties have seats as distinct as their effects ; and that their organs are separated from each other by definite limits. “ The nerves, the spinal cord, the medulla oblongata, and the tubercula quadri- gemina or bigemina, are the only immediate excitors of muscular contraction; the cerebral lobes are restricted to the power of willing this movement, and do not immediately excite them ; and further, that in the spinal cord and in the nerves, the parts which excite movements are not the same as those which are sensible, and those which are sensible have not the power of exciting movement. (Sir C. Bell.) “ There are, then, in the nervous system three properties essentially distinct; one, that of perceiving and willing; in other words, intelligence ; another, that of receiving and transmitting impressions, or sensibility; the third, that of immedi- ately exciting muscular contraction, which I propose to call excitability. Further, there resides in the cerebellum a property, of which there had been previously no idea in physiology; and which consists in the co-ordination of the movements willed by certain parts of the nervous system, and excited by others. The nerve directly excites the contraction of the muscle; the spinal cord unites the separate contractions into regular movements; and the cerebellum co-ordinates these movements into the regular movements of locomotion,—walking, running, flying, &c.; whilst by the cerebral lobes, the animal perceives (feels) and wills.” (Preface, pp. x-xiii.) By this general statement of the opinions of M. Flourens, and the ex- planation of his phraseology, our readers will be prepared to follow us through his chapter on the Laws of nervous action; which, being itself a condensed summary of the results of his experiments, we shall trans- late without abridgment : “ Three grand laws govern the action of the nervous system: the first is the speciality (distinctness) of action ; the second is the subordination of the nervous functions; the third is the unity of the nervous system. “Speciality of nervous action, i. It has been shown that every essentially dis- tinct part of the nervous system has a function or mode of acting, which is equally distinct. I he cerebrum does not act in the manner of the cerebellum, nor the cerebellum like the medulla oblongata, nor the medulla oblongata like the spinal cord and nerves, n. Each part of the nervous system has, then, a peculiar and special action; that is, a different action from the others ; and we have further seen in what this speciality consists. In the cerebral lobes resides the faculty by which](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22469308_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
