70 Historical Notices in regard to the Distinction of Nerves 



indeed, is his minute knowledge of the distribution and functions of the 

 several nerves, that it is hardly too much to assert, that, with the ex- 

 ception of a few minor particulars, his pathological anatomy of the 

 nervous system is practically on a level with the pathological anatomy 

 of the present day. (De Usu Partium, i. 7^ v. 9, 7, 14, viii. 3, 6, 10, 

 12, ixo 1, xii. 10, 11, 15, xiii. 8, xvi. 1, 3, 5, xvii. 2, 3. — De Causis 

 Sympt. i. 5. — De Motu Muse. 1. 13. — De Anat. Adm. vii. 8. — Ars 

 Parva, 10, 11.— De Locis Aff. i, 6, 7, 12, iii. 6, 12.— De Diss. Nerv. 1. 

 — De Plac. Hipp, et Plat. ii. 12, vii. 3, 4, 5, 8.) 



2. The next step was not made until the middle of the fourteenth cen- 

 tury, subsequent to Galen's death ; when Ron deletius (c. 1550,) reason- 

 ing from the phsenomena of paralysis and stupor, enounced it as an ob- 

 servation never previously made, that " All nerves, from their origin in 

 the brain, are, even in the spinal marrow itself, isolated from each other. 

 The cause of paralysis is therefore not so much to be sought for in the 

 spinal marrow as in the encephalic heads of the nerves ; Galen himself 

 having, indeed, remarked, that paralysis always supervenes when the 

 origin of the nerve is obstructed or diseased." (Curandi Methodus c. 32.) 



This observation did not secure the attention which it deserved ; and 

 some thirty years later (1595,) another French physiologist, another 

 celebrated professor in the same university with Rondelet, I mean Lau- 

 RENTius of Montpellier, advanced this very doctrine of his predecessor, 

 as " a new and hitherto unheard-of observation." This anatomist has, 

 however, the merit of first attempting a sensible demonstration of the 

 fact, by resolving, under water, the spinal cord into its constituent fila- 

 ments. " This new and admirable observation," he says, " explains one 

 of the obscurest problems of nature ; why it is that from a lesion, say of 

 the cervical medulla, the motion of the thigh may be lost, while the mo- 

 tions of the arms and thorax shall remain entire." In the second edition 

 of his Anatomy, Dulaurens would seem, however, less confident, not 

 only of the absolute originality, but of the absolute accuracy of the ob- 

 servation. Nor does he rise above the Galenic doctrine, that sensibility 

 and motion may be transmitted by the same fibre. In fact, rejecting 

 the discrimination of hard and soft nerves, he abolishes even the acci- 

 dental distinction which had been recognised by Galen. (Compare Hist. 

 Anat., later editions, iv. c. 18, qq. 9, 10, 11 ; x. c. 12, with the relative 

 places in the first.) 



3. The third step was accomplished by Varollius, (1572), who shewed 

 Galen to be mistaken in holding that the spinal chord is a continuation 

 of the After-brain alone. He demonstrated against all previous anato- 

 mists, that this chord is made up of four columns, severally arising from 

 four encephalic roots ; two roots or trunks from the Brain-proper being 

 prolonged into its anterior, and two from the After-brain into its poste- 

 rior columns. (Anatomia, L. iii ; De Nervis Opticis Epistolae.) 



At the same time, the fact was signalized by other contemporary ana- 

 tomists (as Goiter, 1572, Laurentius, 1.595), that the spinal nerves arise 



