Lectures on the history of physiology during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries / by Sir M. Foster.

  • Foster, M. (Michael), Sir, 1836-1907.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the history of physiology during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries / by Sir M. Foster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    manner be hollow also. He adds that the nervous fluid is supplied and nourished by the arteries of the brain. He rejects the view of there being two different kinds of nervous fluid, one for the production of sensation and move¬ ment, and another for the preservation of life, one connected with the cerebrum, the other with the cerebellum. He rejects also the view that there is one kind of nervous fluid for Sensation and another for movement; he sees no real difficulty in the same nerve serving both for sensation and movement. Lastly, he passes to the most speculative question of all, the 'seat of the soul.’ He rejects the Stahlian opinion that the soul and the sensorium commune is diffused over the whole body, present as well in the tip of the finger as in the brain. He recalls the results arrived at by experiment that the medulla, the central part of the brain, is the seat of sensation and the source of muscular movement. Nor in the cortex of the brain alone is the seat of sensation or the full origin of the cause of muscular movement; each of these lies also in the medulla of the cerebrum and of the cerebellum.” This is not the place to speak about the soul, but the soul has nothing in common with the body other than sensation and movement. Now both sensation and movement have their source in the medulla of the brain. This therefore is the seat of the soul.” Asking the question whether the seat of the soul can be defined within narrower limits, he remarks that no narrower seat can be allotted to the soul than the conjoint origin of all the nerves; nor can any structure be proposed as its seat except that to which we can trace all the nerves. For it will '‘ be easily understood that the sensorium commune ought to lack no feeling of any part of the whole animated body nor any nerve which can convey from any part of the body the impression of external objects. And the same may be said of the nerves of movement. Wherefore, even quite apart from the experimental results described above, we cannot admit as the exclusive seat of the soul, either the corpus callosum or the septum lucidum or the tiny pineal gland, or the corpora striata or any particular region of the “ brain.”