The nervous system of the human body. Embracing the papers delivered to the Royal Society on the subject of the nerves.

  • Bell, Charles, Sir.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nervous system of the human body. Embracing the papers delivered to the Royal Society on the subject of the nerves. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    head, that which was given to the body through the spinal nerves. I then selected the nerves of the face for experiment, to demonstrate to others what I had convinced myself of, by anatomy. Had I commenced with experiments, they would have misled me; I should have supposed the fifth nerve to have been the nerve of sensibility, and the portio dura the nerve of motion. All I wished was to make a sufficient impression on those who had resigned all hope of a definite issue to the investigations of nerves. I had before determined that the fifth was a double nerve, a nerve of motion as well as a nerve of sensation; and I that the portio dura of the seventh was more than a muscular ' nerve, that it belonged to the respiratory system, and that this was the reason of its running apart from the fifth. Facts connected with this subject multiply every day, and now, owing to the knowledge of the general system, its arrange- ment, and the functions of the different roots, they assume an order, instead of adding to the former confusion. To show how little the grand features of the nervous system were known, and how necessary system was to the comprehension of details, I shall add some further illustrations. It had been asserted by our English physician, Johnstone, that ganglions were for the purpose of cutting off* sensation. Monro on the contrary con- ceived that they did not cut off sensation, for they were attached to nerves which he knew to be muscular nerves! That ganglia, he says, do not serve to render motions independent of our will, as an ingenious author (viz, Johnstone) has supposed, is evident, without observing more than that all the branches of