A memoir / by Sir Samuel Wilks.

  • Wilks, Samuel, Sir, 1824-1911.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A memoir / by Sir Samuel Wilks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    this theory stood at that time—that is, 1866, or in the three previous years : • “ The optic thalamus is supposed by some eminent physiologists to be the chief focus of the sensory nerves. The sensory tract may be traced upwards until it almost entirely spreads itself through the substance of the thalamus. It is supposed that the corpora striata stand in the same relation to the thalami optici as the anterior horns of the grey matter of the spinal cord do to the posterior horns, the corpus striatum being considered a motor and the thalamus opticus a sensory centre.” I may say that difficulties had already arisen in ac- cepting these doctrines as absolutely correct, in con- sequence of cases having arisen where a unilateral meningitis was shown after death and an apparent hemiplegia had appeared during life; but as these cases generally occurred afteraninjury,it was thought that the corpus striatum, or the parts around it, especially on that side, had received some shock or change. About this time Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, in publishing a series of cases of injury to the head (Astley Cooper Prize ?), mentioned several where a certain amount of paralysis had occurred in connec- tion with meningitis. It was soon after this that some experiments were made on the brains of living animals by some German physiologists, whose names I forget, and followed by Professor Perrier, showing that when the convolutions were excited by galvanic currents, movement of the limbs took place. Dr. Hugh- lings Jackson, who was working at the subject of nervous diseases, endeavoured to bring these