Contributions to physiology / by Bennet Dowler.

  • Bennet Dowler
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to physiology / by Bennet Dowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    - The action of the brain is indispensible to the perception oUensa. turns ^ manifestation of the will The impressions received hy the SrTes,mul be conveyed to this organ, that the animal may beamed ^Mr^Solly in his late work on the brain, says that the nerves are- mere'conductors, not originating the power ot contraction in the muscles, conducting a something to a certain po.nl [that is the brain,] where it is converted into a sensation and perceived ; and that the cerebellum is a regulator and co-ordinator of muscular action, t AH of which he affirms as true in comparative, as well as in human phv-iology. Drs. Kirkcs and Paget, in their recent manual of Physiology, say, that the cerebellum is the organ for the co-ordination of the voluntary movements, or for the excitement of the combined action of muscles ; a view which they declare, is confirmed by comparative anatomy, and, finally, that no other office is manifest in the cerebellum than that of regulating and combining musadar movements, so that the will be definitely and aptly directed to them.% Mr. Alex. Walker, in 1815, maintained that the cerebellum is the or^an which gives impulse to all muscular motion, voluntary and involuntary—(corrected in 1834, thus to all voluntary motion.) ■•Sensation precedes, not only motion, but perception and intellect in conlornhty with the truth ' nihil in intcllectu quod non prius in sen- su.' The cerebellum is the organ of volition. This or that con- volution [of the cerebellum] will give guidance to corresponding mus- cles.'^ In the system of Physiology written by Dr. P^oget, for the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, it is laid down as an axiom, that sensation does not take place, unless the part of the spinal cord to which the nerve is connected, communicates by an uninterrupted continuity of substance with the brain.\\ In a learned periodical, {Bibliotheca Sacra,) IT Professor Chace, of Brown University, maintains, in his elaborate paper on the dependence of the mental powers upon the bodily organization, that the brain is the only part of man related to the mind, to perception, sensation, voluntary motion; the spinal marrow being only a medium of com- munication for the brain; that the cerebellum is immediately concerned in the regulation and subordination of the different musadar contractions, and that the removal of the latter renders an animal in- cap'ible of executing with any precision, movements requiring the combined and harmonious action of several muscles ; all of which, the the professor affirms, is at once true in man, and in the inferior animals. Dr. R. B. Todd, an eminent and learned author, in a recent lecture on the physiology of the nervous system, concludes that the spinal cord is incapable of originating any nervous action except in virtue of some physical change in it; it cannot develop any mental action except in * Anat. and Phys., 170- f On the Brain, 259, 261- \ 322,3- * Nerv. Syst., 284, 286,400, 414- || xvih, 673. J For Aug., 1849-
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