4:64: HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY. 



years, it was more distinctly delivered in the publications of Mr. John 

 Shaw, Sir C. Bell's pupil. Soon afterwards it was further confirmed, 

 and some part of the evidence corrected, by Mr. Mayo, another pupil 

 of Sir C. Bell, and by M. Majendie. 8 



Sect. 2. The Consequent Sjjeculations. Hypotheses respecting Life, 



Sensation, and Volition. 



I SHALL not attempt to explain the details of these anatomical investi- 

 gations ; and I shall speak very briefly of the speculations 'which have 

 been suggested by the obvious subservience of the nerves to life, sen- 

 sation, and volition. Some general inferences from their distribution 

 were sufficiently obvious ; as, that the seat of sensation and volition is 

 in the brain. Galen begins his work, On the Anatomy of the Nerves, 

 thus : " That none of the members of the animal either exercises 

 voluntary motion, or receives sensation, and that if the nerve be cut, 

 the part immediately becomes inert and insensible, is acknowledged 

 by all physicians. But that the origin of the nerves is partly from the 

 brain, and partly from the spinal marrow, I proceed to explain." And 

 in his work On the Doctrines of Plato and Hippocrates, he proves at 



6 As authority for the expressions which I have now used in the text, I will 

 mention M tiller's Manual of Physiology (4th edition, 1844). In Book iii. Sec- 

 tion 2, Chap, i., " On the Nerves of Sensation and Motion," Muller says, " Char- 

 les Bell was the first who had the ingenious thought that the posterior roots of 

 the nerves of the spine those which are furnished with a ganglion govern 

 sensation only ; that the anterior roots are appointed for motion ; and that the 

 primitive fibres of these roots, after being united in a single nervous cord, are 

 mingled together in order to supply the wants of the skin and muscles. He 

 developed this idea in a little work (An Idea of a new Anatomy of the Brain, 

 London, 1811), which was not intended to travel beyond the circle of his 

 friends." Muller goes on to say, that eleven years later, Majendie prosecuted 

 the same theory. But Mr. Alexander Shaw, in 1839, published A Narrative of 

 the Discoveries of Sir Charles Bell in the Nervous System, in which it appears 

 that Sir Charles Bell had further expounded his views in his lectures to his pu- 

 pils (p. 89), and that one of these, Mr. John Shaw, had in various publications, 

 in 1821 and 1822, further insisted upon the same views; especially in a Memoir 

 On Partial Paralysis (p. 75). MM. Mayo and Majendie both published Me- 

 moirs in August, 1822 ; and these and subsequent works confirmed the doctrine 

 of Bell. Mr. Alexander Shaw states (p. 97), that a mistake of Sir Charles 

 Bell's, in an experiment which he had made to prove his doctrine, was disco 

 vered through the joint labors of M. Majendie and Mr. Mayo 



