on the Structure, Distribution, find Functions of the Nerves. +4- .9 



tongue in contact with the point; but if we touch a nerve of 

 taste, we shall have no perception of form or of place, we shall 

 experience a metallic taste. 



" The innovations of the celebrated continental authority 

 Bichat, did not bring us a step nearer the truth. When he 

 at once threw off respect for his contempoi'aries, and for the 

 authority of those who had preceded him, he equally disre- 

 garded the facts of anatomy. There may be merit in taking 

 new views of a subject ; but Bichat was continually holding a 

 thing up by the wrong end, and presenting it in an aspect so 

 singular, as to puzzle any one to say whether or not it was 

 that with which he had been long familiar ; accordingly, what 

 had been termed the sympathetic system of nerves, he called 

 the ganglionic system ; although they are not more distin- 

 guishable by ganglia than the other nerves, upon which in- 

 deed the ganglia are remarkable for their size, number, and 

 regularity. These ganglia must not be thrown out of the 

 system altogether, merely because they are contained within 

 the skull and vertebrae, which circumstance should rather 

 mark their importance. 



" Bichat persuaded himself that his ganglionic system was 

 isolated, and a thing by itself; when, on the contrary, the 

 connexions of this part of the nervous system are universal. 

 The wide spreading fifth pair, and the thirty spinal nerves, 

 give large and conspicuous roots to this system. It exhibits 

 a tissue extending universally. 



" It was a still more unfortunate mistake of this ingenious 

 physiologist, to suppose the sympathetic nerve to be the same 

 with that, which in the lower animals (the vermes), is seen 

 coursing from one extremity of the body to the other. In the 

 leech, or worm, those nerves produce union and concatenation 

 of all the voluntary motions, and bestow sensibility as well as 

 motion ; yet he saw in the sympathetic system of the human 

 body, only the developement of the same system of nerves, 

 although he was aware that in man the sympathetic nerve be- 

 stowed neither sensibility nor the power of motion. 



" Bichat announced his system with a popular eloquence, 

 which had a very remarkable influence over all Europe. Phy- 

 siologists yielding to him, mistook the importance of the several 

 parts of the nervous system ; and even the multiplied expe- 

 riments of Le Gallois failed to convince them of the nature 

 of the spinal marrow. 



" The experiments of M. Le Gallois were of the rudest kind 



possible. The spinal marrow was cut across, or destroyed, 



by passing skewers into the spinal canal, and the effects were 



observed ; as if the spinal marrow were a simple body. Where- 



Vol. 64. No. 320. Dec. 1824. 3 L as, 



