FUNCTIONS OF MOTOR AND SENSORY NERVES 87 



attempted of late years in physiology will prove that the 

 opening of living animals has done more to perpetuate error 

 than to confirm the just views taken from the study of anatomy 

 and natural motions*" 



And at p.i 307 : 



"Surely it is time that the schools of this kingdom should 

 be distinguished from those of France. Let physiologists of 

 that country borrow from us, and follow up our opinions by 

 experiments (see the experiments of M. Magendie on the dis- 

 tinctions in the roots of the spinal nerves); but let us continue 

 to build that structure whicn has been commenced in the 

 labours of the Munros and Hunters" 



The claim thus started in 1823 was followed up by the 

 publication in the following year of An Exposition of the Nervous 

 System, of which the subsequent editions (1830, 1836 and 1844) 

 have served as the usual sources of reference and quotation 

 by subsequent writers. It is important therefore to examine 

 this 1824 edition with some little care and to compare the 

 republications given in it with the original publications 

 of 1821. 



Bell's Exposition of 1824 consists of an introduction of 64 

 pages followed by a republication of his first four papers 

 in the Phil. Trans, of the R.S. The Introduction substantially 

 incorporates all the statements published by Magendie during 

 the two previous years, without however once naming him. 

 But that Magendie was prominent in Bell's mind at the time 

 of writing is obvious enough to any one acquainted with the 

 publications of the French physiologist; it is indeed sufficiently 

 indicated by his allusion to " experiments " on p. 2 : 



" In France, where an attempt has been made to deprive me 

 of the originality of these discoveries, experiments without 

 number and without mercy have been made upon living 

 animals ; not under the direction of anatomical knowledge or 

 the guidance of just deduction, but conducted with cruelty and 

 indifference, in hope to catch at some of the accidental facts of 

 a system which, it is evident, the experimenters did not fully 

 comprehend." 



This introduction to Bell's Exposition of 1824 contains a 

 correct account of the essential physiological facts. The anterior 

 column and the anterior root are motor, the posterior column 



