406 NOTICE OF THE LATE SIR CHARLES BELL. 



" My anatomy of the brain is a thing that occupies my head almost entirely. 

 I hinted to you formerly that I was ' burning,' or on the eve of a grand discovery. 

 I consider the organs of the outward senses as forming a distinct class of nerves 

 from the others. I trace them to corresponding parts of the brain totally distinct 

 from the origin of the others. My object is not to publish this, but to lecture it, 

 * * * as it is really the only new thing that has appeared in anatomy 

 since the days of HUNTER ; and, if I make it out, as interesting as the circulation, 

 or the doctrine of absorption. But I must still have time. Now is the end of a 

 week, and I shall be at it again." 



In" another letter, bearing the post-marks March 28 and 31, 1808, is the fol- 

 lowing passage : ' I have been thinking of having a room five or six miles from 

 town, and pursuing there my physiology of the brain that which is to make me, I 

 am convinced." 



Others have followed in the same track, and walking by the lights which he 

 had furnished, and in the path which he had pointed out, have advanced our 

 knowledge and confirmed the truth of his opinions. Amongst these, his relative 

 pupil, and coadjutor, Mr JOHN SHAW, has been conspicuous ; and to him Sir 

 CHARLES BELL was indebted for some important experiments. Mr HERBERT 

 MAYO, another of his pupils, has prosecuted similar inquiries. In France, in Italy, 

 and in Germany, the method of investigation first employed by Sir CHARLES BELL 

 to determine the functions of the nerves, by attending to their roots, and not to 

 their trunks, has been followed by MAJENDIE, LONJET, BELLINGERI, and the most 

 distinguished physiologists of those countries. They have instituted experiments 

 in imitation of Sir CHARLES BELL'S ; and the practical precepts which were first 

 deduced from his discoveries, by himself and by Mr JOHN SHAW, have thus been 

 extended and multiplied. 



Mr ARNOT, of the Middlesex Hospital, has stated with so much discrimina- 

 tion and distinctness the precise nature of Sir CHARLES BELL'S discoveries in the 

 physiology of the nerves, that I shall take the liberty of concluding my observa- 

 tions on this part of the subject in his words. After acknowledging whatever he 

 thought incomplete or imperfect in BELL'S writings on the Nervous System, and 

 especially that his views in respect to certain nerves being superadded in the 

 higher animals, for the purposes of respiration, had not been fully proven, he goes 

 on to say 



" But after all these acknowledgments, there remains to BELL, clearly and 

 unequivocally, the merit of having first shewn 



" That in investigating the functions of the nervous system, we must direct 

 our attention to the roots and not to the trunks of the nerves. 



" That the nervous trunks, conveying motion and sensation, consist of two 

 distinct sets of filaments in the same sheath. 



" That the filaments for motion form a distinct root from those for sensation, 



