Documents and dates of modern discoveries in the nervous system.

Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Documents and dates of modern discoveries in the nervous system. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    53/192 (page 37)
    IDEA OF A NEW ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN; SUBMITTED FOR THE OBSERVATIONS OF HIS FRIENDS ; BY CHARLES BELL, F.R.S.E. Date of Printing (the work was never published) —1811. It is not a little curious that Mr. Shaw, a friend and relative of Sir C. Bell, in the Medico- Chirurgical Transactions, Vol. XII, Part I, page 149, should expressly have said, “ Sir C. Bell’s short essay on the Anatomy of the B rain was printed in 1809and, as M. Magendie’s Second Paper—“Experiences sur les Fonctions des Ra- cines des Nerfs qui naissent de la Mo'elle FpinUire,” was published in 1822, and Mr. Shaw then claimed a precedence of thirteen years for Sir C. Bell, it is evident that Mr. Shaw again ascribed to this pamphlet the date of 1809 !!! This date was repeated in Papers, Reviews, Pamphlets, SfC.; yet Sir C. Bell did not think it necessary, for many years, to correct this error. In his work, however, entitled “ The Nervous System,” published in 1830, Sir C. Bell, at last, formally and repeatedly abandoned all claim to that date. In page 14, he says, — “ I printed a little work in 1811, which I entitled ‘ An Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain, submitted for the observation of the Author’s Friends.’” And again, page 21, he says,—“ The 1 Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain, SfC.’ was published [printed, it should be] in 1811.” To PREVENT THE POSSIBILITY OF THIS PAPER BEING SUP- POSED TO CONTAIN WHAT IT DOES NOT CONTAIN, IT IS HERE GIVEN ENTIRE; AND ITS NEAREST APPROACHES TO THE NEW DOCTRINES ARE PRINTED IN ITALICS OR SMALL CAPITALS.— Sir C. Bell does not pretend to have made any further ' ADVANCE TILL 1821, — TEN YEARS AFTER THIS.