THE PART PLAYED BY SIR CHARLES 

 BELL IN THE DISCOVERY OF THE 

 FUNCTIONS OF MOTOR AND SEN- 

 SORY NERVES (1822) 



By A. D. WALLER, M.D., F.R.S. 



In time to come, the discovery of motor and sensory nerves 

 during the first quarter of the nineteenth century will rank 

 with that of the circulation of the blood in the first quarter 

 of the seventeenth century. "Harvey, 1628," will then as 

 now be the human time-mark of the earlier discovery. What 

 will be that of the more recent and equally far-reaching 

 principle that the nervous impulses controlling our conscious 

 and unconscious life flow by separate channels from world 

 to brain and from brain to world ? Who was the actual dis- 

 coverer of what Galen imagined two thousand years ago ? 



To-day, in 191 1, "Charles Bell, 181 i," are the name and 

 date that are in this country associated with that discovery. 



The first and principal object of this study is to prove that 

 these are the wrong name and the wrong date and that the 

 discovery belongs exclusively to another name and date — 

 namely to " Magendie, 1822." 



Twenty years ago, in preparing An Introduction to Human 

 Physiology, I summarised my conclusion in the following terms 

 after careful study of the original documents : 



"All these facts, inclusive of those dependent on the exist- 

 ence of recurrent sensory fibres, were discovered by Magendie 

 (1822). Charles Bell (181 1), to whom they are commonly 

 ascribed, observed motion on excitation of the anterior roots 

 of a recently killed animal and inferred that the anterior or 

 4 cerebral ' roots are motor and sensory and that the posterior 

 or 4 cerebellar' roots serve to govern vital actions. A. Walker 

 (1809) made the unfortunate guess that the anterior roots 

 were sensory and the posterior motor." — Introduction to Human 

 Physiology, 1st edition, 1891, p. 475. 



A few months ago, in the Lancet of February 18, 191 1, 

 Prof. iKeith — Bell's successor in the chair of Anatomy at the 



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