APPENDIX I. 

 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



Die Leitungsbaknen in Gehirn unci Riickenmark. By W. von Bechterew, Professor in the 

 University of Kasan. 8vo, pp. 210, with sixteen figures and a lithographed plate. 



This is the authorised German version of a Russian treatise, mainly anatomical but partly 

 physiological, dealing with the central nervous system. The translator is studying medicine at 

 the Russian University of Dorpat. The author is the well -known neurologist and physician, 

 recently promoted from Kasan to St. Petersburg. 



The work consists of a clear if somewhat arbitrary statement of the anatomy of the human 

 brain and spinal cord, as far as these are elucidated by the older methods of dissection, 

 maceration, etc., assisted by the microscope, and especially as amplified by what is known as 

 the Flechsig-W'eigert method. Professor Bechterew has himself been an assiduous worker by 

 this method, and has contributed a number of details to cerebral anatomy by its means ; 

 indeed the chief value of the volume before us is the outcome of this fact ; and so pre- 

 ponderantly is the book compiled from the results obtained by this one method that it may 

 be desirable in reviewing its pages to briefly recall the origin and principle on which the 

 method is based. 



The brain and spinal cord consist structurally of two kinds of anatomical substance, called 

 from their tints respectively "grey matter" and "white matter". The nervous elements of 

 the latter are without exception bundles of nerve fibres, to the fatty sheaths of which the 

 opacity and milky appearance of the white matter is wholly due. That observant physiologist, 

 the late Carl Ludwig, noted in the year 1872 that in the brain and spinal cord of new-born 

 animals certain areas of the white matter are scarcely at all distinguishable from the grey 

 matter. The want of whiteness in these areas proved, he found, to be due to the majority of 

 the nerve fibres not having there at that early period of growth formed around themselves the 

 sheathes of fat which they come later to possess. In this way originated the discovery that the 

 nerve fibres of brain and spinal cord do not all develop together and at the same time and rate. 

 Certain of them are late, certain of them earlier ; and they develop in groups, late groups 

 and early groups ; and the grouping is determined strictly by function, fibres of identical 

 function being developed contemporaneously. 



The difference between certain groups or bundles in their date of acquirement of the fatty 

 sheath is very great indeed. In the human embryo some nerve bundles are completely sheathed 

 at half-term, others are not so even in children just old enough to walk. By following out 

 these differences between sets of nerve fibres it is possible to trace the course of strands of them 

 along the intricacies of the central nervous system ; the method is much facilitated by use of 

 dyes which stain deeply the fully-formed sheaths of the fibres, and leave the undeveloped 

 sheath uncoloured. A remarkably successful method of dyeing for this purpose was devised 

 by Weigert in 1883. 



Ludwig put his discovery into the hands of his laboratory assistant, Paul Flechsig, and 

 by the latter the anatomy of new important paths of conduction was made out in the years 

 l8 73"75. an d published in a monograph. This research at once established Flechsig's fame, 

 and led to his appointment as Professor of Psychioltrie in Leipzig. Even Flechsig's labours 

 had not exhausted the new field of observation, and many details remained over for others to 

 undertake. With several of these Bechterew occupied himself in Flechsig's laboratory in 

 1884-85. From this period arises the volume now under consideration. 



The book is certainly an interesting one, but is at the same time disappointing. It bears 

 many marks of having been written not at leisure, but rather in spite of the want of it. 

 Among the references not a few are erroneous ; this is markedly the case with those 

 from English sources [cf. pp. 25, 34, 201, etc.). Again it is remarkable that neither in the 

 preface nor in the description of the methods introduced by Ludwig is Ludwig's name referred 

 to. Again, the author, although he bases his dicta almost exclusively on Ludwig's develop- 

 mental method, has not sufficiently considered the limits of delicacy and accuracy of that 

 method : he does not bear in mind that although the method can trace with accuracy the 

 course of compact bundles of fibres, it is of little use in tracing scattered sets of fibres from 



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