PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTATION. 185 



example, as that of Alexander Walker, or that of his own first 

 " Idea." 



These assertions are not now made for the first time, with the view 

 (as might be urged) of lowering Sir Charles Bell's credit, and thereby- 

 weakening the force of the testimony borne by him in regard to the 

 uselessness of experimentation as a means of physiological discovery. 

 Forty-two years ago, the history I have now sketched (which was then 

 a matter of contemporary knowledge) was told in detail in the leading 

 medical " Quarterly " ; the misrepresentations of Mr. A. Shaw as to 

 Sir C. Bell's "Idea" of 1811 were fully exposed; and Bell himself 

 was distinctly charged with having altered what professed to be exact 

 reprints of his papers in the " Philosophical Transactions," in order to 

 make them square with the corrections supplied by the experiments of 

 Magendie. To those charges, so far as I am aware, no reply teas ever 

 made, either by Mr. A. Shaw or Sir C. Bell ; but a new and more 

 correct history, including a reprint of Bell's " Idea," was given by Mr. 

 A. Shaw nearly thirty years later in the " Journal of Anatomy and 

 Physiology " (vol. iii, 1869). Further, in Professor Yulpian's " Lecons 

 sur la Physiologie du Systeme Nerveux" (Paris, 1866), the history is 

 narrated in terms almost identical with my own, omitting only the 

 reference I have supplied to Magendie's first knowledge of Bell's 

 views, but inserting several of the altered passages in Bell's pa- 

 pers. And, finally, the venerable Professor Milne-Edwards, in his 

 admirable " Lec/ons sur la Physiologie et l'Anatomie Comparee " 

 (tome xi, pp. 361, 362), has given a most true and just appreciation 

 of the respective shares which Bell and Magendie had in this great 

 discovery. 



I have never admitted the truth of the well-worn ada;e, " A little 

 knowledge is a dangerous thing " ; because every one who studies 

 any subject whatever must begin with " a little knowledge," and only 

 by its possession can know where and how to obtain more. 



But " a little knowledge " is dangerous when it leads its possessor 

 to imagine that he (or she) knows all about the subject ; and is doubly 

 dangerous when it is taught as the whole truth to others. And this 

 is exactly what Mrs. Dr. A. Kingsford has done, in her desire to excite 

 a prejudice against physiological experimentation ; fastening eagerly 

 upon Sir Charles Bell's depreciation of it, without taking any trouble 

 to ascertain historically what that depreciation is worth. Fortnightly 

 Review. 



