THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 143 



(C) Drs. Gall and Spurzheim have shewn that the nerves and 

 spinal marrow do not arise from the brain, but only communicate 

 with it : for, when the brain is absent, the foetus equally possesses 

 them, and neither the cerebral nerves nor the spinal marrow are 

 in proportion to each other in the various species of the animal 

 kingdom, nor the spinal nerves to the spinal marrow. 



(D) Although no nerves can be discovered in these parts, and 

 although ordinarily they have 1 no feeling, yet that they have, in. 

 a lower degree, what, in a higher is called feeling, is shewn by 

 the extreme sensibility which they acquire when inflamed, as they 

 nearly all frequently are. 



(E) Drs. Gall and Spurzheim have also shewn that, besides the 

 numerous communications of the whole nervous system, not only 

 the two sides of the cerebrum, cerebellum, and spinal marrow, are 

 united by commissures, but that the fibres of the anterior pyra- 

 midal eminences decussate each other, forming an exception to the 

 rule, observed in every other part of the brain, of the nervous fibres, 

 destined to each side of the body, running on the same side of the 

 brain ; and they hence explain why injuries of one side of the brain 

 sometimes influence the same, sometimes the opposite, side of 

 the body. It is to be hoped that morbid dissection will ascertain 

 the correctness of this explanation. 



I refer to the writings of these physicians for an account of their 

 great discoveries in the structure of the nervous system, and shall 

 merely bear testimony to the truth of most of their anatomical 

 assertions. Those few which I have not repeatedly seen proved, 

 are I doubt not perfectly accurate. The most candid anatomical 

 lecturers of London confess that they knew nothing of the anatomy 

 of the brain till they saw it dissected by Dr. Spurzheim, and it w 

 a matter of wonder that while pupils are not instructed to dissect 

 limbs by slices as we cut brawn, they should be taught no other 

 mode of examining the brain and thus be left in ignorance of its 

 true structure.* 



* Anatomie et Physiologie du fty.ttcmc ncrveiix par Gall et Spurzhcim, 

 Physiognomical System by Spurzhcim. 



