MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. 345 



is able to carry on its functions indejjendently of the other. The inadequacy 

 of the vivisecting method being thus made manifest, we turn to consider 

 another and more popular mode of inquiry among medical men, and that is 

 the pathological method, or rather the study of morbid anatomy as regards 

 the brain. The pathologist considered that by watching the effects of disease 

 as well as injury, and awaiting the result, he would meet with a sufficient 

 number of cases in which particular parts of the brain were diseased, and 

 hence their functions deranged, to be able to tell, b}' comparing the symptoms 

 during life with the morbid appearances after death, what relation subsisted 

 between the several parts and the functions exercised by those parts. But 

 here again we are met by difficulties somewhat analogous to those which 

 we have seen beset and embarrass the mode of investigation by ablation of 

 parts. There is perhaps a greater chance that morbid action would be set 

 up in one part of the brain, and be confined thereto, than that we should 

 light upon a single organ in our attempts to cut out parts separately, and 

 succeed in removing that part singly, neither more nor less : but how sel- 

 dom in disease have we its ravages so strictly confined, or an absence of 

 general or sympathetic disturbance involving neighbouring or distant parts 

 more or less. Again, it must depend on the nature of the morbid action, 

 whether the function, even when disturbed, be exalted, diminished, or 

 altogether suppressed ; while how difficult is it to determine respecting 

 any individual labouring under severe illness, especially disease of the 

 brain, to what degree any of his mental or moral powers be afi^ected 

 beyond the information to be obtained from his giving rational answers 

 or not, to a few common-place questions. Morbid anatomy is useful in 

 prosecuting the enquiry now proposed, it like everything else, has its 

 proper time and place. Some light had, however, been thrown on these 

 subjects by pathological investigation ; and the continued prosecution of 

 the inquiry, with due precaution, would doubtless add still farther to 

 our knowledge. On reviewing, however, what had been as yet actually 

 done by pathology in the way of connecting derangement of function 

 with disorder of particular parts of the brain, but two points seem to 

 have been with any certainty established ; and these were the relation be- 

 tween loss of power of utterance and an alteration of the anterior lobules of 

 the hemispheres, and between derangements of the generative system and 

 alteration of one of the lobes of the cerebellum. These statements were 

 originally made by a French author of note. Other relations were said to 

 exist between affections of the extremities, upper or lower, and some of the 

 deeper-seated parts of the brain ; but these had nothing to do with the higher 

 functions attributed to the brain, and which he was more particularly consi- 

 dering; while even these relations between the parts alluded to were con- 

 tradictory of the result obtained by those who experimented on the same 

 parts in living animals. As yet, then, it did not appear that much light had 

 been thrown on the subject bv pathological inquires. The two conclusions 

 pointed out, however, were in accordance with the result of observation 

 made b.v an altogether different method, and, as far as they went, corrobo- 

 rated the existence and situation of the organs of language and amativeness. 

 New facts of course would be thus made out, but as being in itself an ade- 

 quate method for discovering the functions of the brain, doubts might rea- 

 sonably be entertained of the efficiency of mere morbid anatomy. 



