Abstracts of three lectures on the brain-mechanism of sight and smell / delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, by Alexander Hill.
- Alexander Hill
- Date:
- 1886
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Abstracts of three lectures on the brain-mechanism of sight and smell / delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, by Alexander Hill. 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.
5/14
![ON THE BRAIN-MECHANISM OF SIGHT AND SMELL. LECTURE I. The History of Sensouy Nerves, and their Relation to the Central System, Nothing in the progress of science is more conspicuous than the fre- quency with which tlie standpoint of investigation is changed. For a time, the assault of a difficult problem is carried on from a certain point; and it may be that, for a generation, observers are content with the slowly widening breach produced by their successive blows. But when a more commanding position is discovered, it is soon occupied by the reorganised forces, each man eager to discharge his shot at the stronghold, from the new vantage ground. Never before, in the his- tory of science, has the whole plan of attack been so completely changed as by the doctrine of evolution. Before Darwin, our intel- lectual reflection of the universe showed but stationary forms. Plants and animals, arts and creed, stood still—each a final and completed form. The man of science and the man of letters, each alike viewed the object of his study as a thing at rest. At the master's word, all was changed. The inhabitants of the mind's realm began to move ; every creature in it bore a history—emerging from the past, and growing from a minute simple form, it was tending towards perfection and complexity. Before Darwin, the universe appeared immutable ; since Darwin wrote, it is seen to be mobile. The recognition of this great fact has penetrated every science ; fresh impetus has been given to research, fresh aims to study, and, in those branches of science to which we more especially devote ourselves, inquiry has entered upon new ground. Anatomy still deals with structure, and the final aim of the study of structure is to discover function. Ijut the anatomist no longer regards his matei'ial as fraught with teleological lessons only ; it discourses to him of the past; it suggests the future. No longer does the structure just exposed by his scalpel stand alone, but attracts to itself out of the gloom forms that have passed, and is linked in relationship with all that now exist. And so, while the exigencies of knowledge are enormously increased, the aims of study are more sharply defined. We want to know of every animal, of every organ, even of every cell, how it came by its present form. Nor does it impress upon our minds an image, until we can, as it were, see it move ; until we can trace its path. Like a solitary stone standing uprighc on a plain, it only satisfies our mental grasp when, by comparing it with other forms, by observing on it traces of the tool-marks, by painful interpretation of its inscribed signs, we realise the forces under the influence of which it assumed its outline and position. The scientific standpoint of to- day might thus be defined. We study the History of the forms around us. Such historical study, however, is no mere intellectual pastime ; it has come to be a practical necessity that we should know something of the changes through which structures have passed, in order to dis- tinguish between the immediate suitability to perform function, and historical continuity of form. In no case is this so obvious,] as when our attention is directed to the central nervous system. For, among the organs of the body, the nervous system is the real aristocrat. First to be formed in the embryo, first to be considered when the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22277948_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
