Dr. Foville's Researches on the Anatomy of the Brain. 279 



brain of man, has at every period in which anatomy has been 

 at all minutely cultivated, necessarily arrested the attention of 

 the most celebrated anatomists. We learn this from the hi- 

 story of anatomical science from the time of the school of Alex- 

 andria, down to Gall antl Spurzheim, who in our own day 

 have given to this kind of research an impulse and direction 

 altogether new. 



In this part of our structure it is not surgical anatomy with 

 which we have to do. Hitherto the bold hands of our most di- 

 stinguished surgeons have not ventured to carry the scalpel into 

 parts so delicate, and possessing so intimate a connection with 

 the continuation of life. It is a higher description of anatomy : — 

 it is physiological anatomy, of a nature necessarily somewhat 

 speculative, which must direct the knife. Not that it is to en- 

 deavour to resolve questions inaccessible to human reason, 

 such as. Where is the seat of the soul ? What is its mode of 

 action ? and What is the relation which it bears to material 

 substance ? — but it must see if it be possible by analysis to dis- 

 cover what parts are particularly connected with the intellec- 

 tual faculties, what with the senses, and what are connected 

 with motion. 



To resolve, or at least to throw light on these great ques- 

 tions, of the difficulty of which we are perhaps not even now 

 sufficiently aware, various means have been employed, accord- 

 ing to the different manner in which the subject has been con- 

 sidered ; and also according to the progress of biology, or the 

 science of life. 



The first method which offers itself, and that which in fact 

 has been followed by most anatomists, is to examine the or- 

 gan by itself, in the human subject, in its healthy state, and 

 when arrived at its full development. But it was necessary to 

 effect something more than a superficial examination of the 

 form and j^roportion of the parts, and to penetrate into the in- 

 terior more completely than could be done by merely making 

 different horizontal and vertical sections, as was generally the 

 practice before the time of Gall and Spurzheim. It was not 

 with the brain and spinal marrow, as with the other organs, 

 that a simple surgical anatomy was required. This would be 

 all but useless ; since it scarcely ever happens that an opera- 

 tion is required to be performed on these parts. 



A second method, which it will be conceived possessed a 

 superior degree of influence on our knowledge of the mysterious 

 seat of our faculties, consisted in embracing the opportunity 

 which design or accident aflbrded foi- comparing the cerebro- 

 spinal system of man, wild that of the animals the most nearly 

 related to him. 



Although 



