TEE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND TEE INTELLECT. 



265 



wounds. The same error has ruled in Syria from 

 the earliest days. The Mosaic books prove it in 

 a thousand passages : the life of flesh is in the 

 blood, and therefore it is forbidden to use blood 

 for food ; the hunter must carefully bleed his 

 prey, pour the fluid on the ground, and cover it 

 with earth. This belief, surviving in the popular 

 mind, afterward gave rise to the use of blood for 

 signing treaties, washing out stains on honor, and 

 attesting oaths. In modern biology, although 

 the blood is still a living fluid in every sense of 

 the word, it is yet nothing more than one, and 

 one of the least high in importance, of all the 

 parts that are grouped together to make up the 

 body. Its duty is wholly passive. It is a kind 

 of liquid aliment, diffused for moistening the tis- 

 sues through a wonderful system of irrigation, 

 and bearing with it the principles needed for their 

 restoration, the essential condition of their ac- 

 tion. 



Coming down through the ages from the times 

 of Homer and Moses, and placing ourselves in 

 thought in Greece, at the day of her intellectual 

 brightness — the close of the fourth century before 

 our era — we find the functions of the brain still 

 unknown, and its nature supposed to resemble 

 that of the marrow in the bones. Plato, the au- 

 thor of a special treatise on this subject, does 

 indeed lodge the immortal or divine soul in the 

 head, but places in the trunk the seat of feeling 

 and passion, and depicts dreams as wandering 

 about the heart, "reflected as from a glass, on 

 the smooth surface of. the liver." Aristotle be- 

 lieves that the nerves all come from the heart, 

 and the Stoic school maintained the heart to be 

 the seat of intelligence — even long after the true 

 theory of the nervous system had been discovered 

 by two Asiatic physicians. Herophilus and Era- 

 sistratus seem to be entitled to that honor. Both 

 lived at the court of Alexander's successors, 

 about the year 290 ; both gave occasion for that 

 undying legend of the dissection of living slaves, 

 which meant that they understood much more 

 about anatomy than their contemporaries did, 

 and sought the secret of the action of the organs. 

 Their teaching as to the part assigned to the 

 brain met a resolute opponent in the philosopher 

 Chrysippus, the glory of the portico at that time, 

 who took up Aristotle's notions decidedly, gave 

 them shape and clearness, and supported them 

 by. seemingly convincing proofs. In the bosom, 

 as Chrysippus held, resides the 7, the thinking 

 and sentient being. " Is it not in that region," 

 he said, "that we feel the shock of whatever 

 strikes our senses strongly ? Do we not place 



the hand there when speaking of ourselves, or to 

 draw attention to ourselves, instead of raising it to 

 the forehead ? " Chrysippus argued from unde- 

 niable exact facts, reasoning as a physiologist who 

 looks only at effects ; but if the heart does palpi- 

 tate in the bosom when lively emotion is felt, it 

 is because that emotion is transmitted to it from 

 the brain by nerves, too fine indeed to be known 

 at that period. Herophilus and Erasistratus, who 

 saw, on the other hand, that the nerves of the 

 sense of sight do unquestionably have relations 

 with the brain, and not with the heart, had been 

 led by anatomy to place the seat of sensation in 

 the brain. At any rate, the opinion of Chrysip- 

 pus, supported by the fame of that second chief 

 of the Stoic school, and fortunate too, in the ap- 

 peal to facts that any one could verify, prevailed 

 for nearly four centuries, and we find Galen pro- 

 nouncing vehemently against it, and returning 

 constantly to the attack, which he would not 

 have done if these views had not been accepted 

 in his day by the whole philosophic world, even 

 then given to backwardness. We may add that 

 they are still fashionable in religion, art, and lit- 

 erature, even in our time. 



Galen is unquestionably a striking figure. He 

 lived about four centuries after Herophilus, and 

 was, for some time, near the person of Marcus 

 Aurelius. The education he received was not 

 such as to fit him to play the part of a reformer. 

 He studied at Smyrna under an old professor 

 named Pelops, who taught that the veins and 

 arteries passed out from the brain, and that all 

 the nerves, on the contrary, probably proceeded 

 from the heart. This was the opinion of the 

 Stoics, still in its full vigor. Galen expressed 

 some doubts ; and Pelops, yielding to admiration 

 for his pupil, maintained thenceforth that the 

 brain, through itself and the spinal marrow, was 

 undoubtedly the source of all the nerves. The 

 more we examine Galen's work, the more we are 

 astonished at the prodigious amount of facts with 

 which he enriched the anatomical and physiologi- 

 cal history of the nervous system, which may 

 even confidently be said to date from him. He 

 boldly attacked the whole set of philosophers 

 who place the seat of intelligence, will, and mo- 

 tion, in the heart. He affirms that the brain is 

 the receptacle of the mental faculties, and the 

 affections of the directing soul, as well as of the 

 soul itself. He laughs at the physician of the 

 day who follows the teaching of the school in 

 placing these in the heart, yet applies to the head 

 the remedies prescribed for loss of memory. 

 According to Galen, the brain is the originator of 



