84 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



govern the operation of the viscera necessary to the continu- 

 ance of life." 



P. 27 : 



" The cerebrum I consider as the grand organ by which the 

 mind is united to the body. Into it all the nerves from the 

 external organs of the senses enter ; and from it all the nerves 

 which are the agents of the will pass out." 



P. 36 : 



" The secret operations of the bodily frame, and the con- 

 nections which unite the parts of the body into a system, are 

 through the cerebellum and nerves proceeding from it." 



There are several evident conclusions to be drawn from 

 any fair consideration of these passages — firstly that Bell does 

 not say that anterior roots are motor and posterior sensory; 

 secondly that Bell does say that the cerebral or anterior root 

 is motor and sensory, the cerebellar or posterior root insensi- 

 tive ; thirdly that the so-called experiment of dividing the roots 

 as described by Bell did not entitle him to say anything more 

 than he did. And what he said was no advance upon the 

 knowledge of his time. It is ludicrous to appeal to such 

 speculations as containing an anticipation of Magendie's lucid 

 and precise account quoted above. 



There is little enough in these passages and there is nothing 

 at all of any significance in the rest of the pamphlet, which 

 even as a purely speculative essay is very poor stuff — far less 

 precise indeed than the ordinary speculative anatomy of that 

 time. It is indeed nothing more than a very inferior echo 

 of the anatomical reasonings published by Alexander Walker 

 in 1809. 



Walker then said {New Anatomy and Physiology of the 

 Brain, etc.. Archives of Universal Science, vol. iii. July 1809, 

 p. 172): 



it 



. wherever a part, having both sensation and motion, is 

 supplied from one nervous trunk it envelopes both a nerve of 

 sensation and one of volition The only apparent difference 

 between the nerves of sensation and those of volition is that 

 their motions take place in different directions. The latter 

 therefore may be said to resemble the arteries, the former 

 the veins." 



