MODERNBIOLOGY 375 



and love of the Creator. What chiefly made his name famous to later genera- 

 tions, however, was his original investigations in the sphere of nerve- 

 physiology. Even Galen had been aware that some nerves had to do with 

 motion, while others received sense-impressions, and since then the nervous 

 system had been investigated by innumerable scientists with increasing ac- 

 curacy in the matter of detail. But there still remained the question of how 

 the nerves running from the spinal marrow can act as intermediaries be- 

 tween not only motive impulses, but also sense-impressions; to this question 

 no answ^er had been given or else only very unsatisfactory ones. Bell recorded 

 his experiment on this subject in a brief paper entitled Idea of a Neiv Anat- 

 omy of the Brain. He had a few copies of this printed in 1811 and presented 

 them to his friends. In this work he describes how he severed the posterior 

 root of a medullary nerve without causing any muscular contraction, whereas 

 the act of touching the anterior root caused convulsions in the muscles. From 

 this he concludes that the medullary nerves have a double function, due to 

 their double roots. The idea, however, is hinted at rather than followed up, 

 and indeed this small brochure contains several similar suggestions — re- 

 garding the specific mental energies, a problem which J. Miiller afterwards 

 examined thoroughly, as well as ideas on the localizations in the great brain 

 and the connexion between them, an inquiry which at the time held wide 

 possibilities. During the next decade, however, Bell did not follow the line 

 he had opened up, with the result that others got in advance of him, es- 

 pecially Magendie in Paris. Nevertheless, Bell's work received high praise 

 later on, which it deserves without a doubt. 



Francois Magendie was born in 1785 at Bordeaux, where his father 

 was a surgeon. He went to Paris to study medicine, and after studying in 

 great poverty and anxiety and having successfully passed his examinations, he 

 became prosector at the anatomical institute, then a hospital doctor, and 

 finally a professor at the College de France, where he worked with immense 

 success as a lecturer, gathering a number of distinguished pupils around him. 

 He systematically originated the method of ascertaining the vital phenomena 

 by operations performed on live animals, thereby exciting both admiration 

 and disgust amongst his contemporaries; the sensitive Rudolphi mentions 

 his experiments with horror, and his notorious ruthlessness has even gone 

 down to posterity. Perhaps this has been exaggerated owing to his manners 

 towards his fellow men; his manners were rough and his self-esteem and 

 scorn for the opinions of others often reached outrageous heights. But if 

 he was hard on others, he did not spare himself; when for the first time 

 cholera raged in Paris, he voluntarily undertook the task of ministering to 

 the sick among the poorest of the population, defying both the risk of in- 

 fection and the fanaticism of the populace, who believed that the doctors 

 had caused the disease by poisoning the drinking-water. Magendie was 



