54 



not question the sincerity of Dr. Hall's conviction of his own origi- 

 nality, there can be no doubt that he was much more largely anticipated 

 by preceding physiologists than he could ever be brought to recognize ; 

 and this not only in the observation, but in the generalization and 

 physiological application of the phenomena, and, in short, in all essential 

 parts of the doctrine, such at least as are likely to maintain their ground. 

 This, however, being admitted, it is equally true that from the time 

 this subject was taken up by Dr. Hall, the physiology and pathology 

 of the nervous system may almost be said to have entered into a new 

 phase. With all the ardour of a discoverer persuaded of being the 

 founder of a great and influential doctrine, he thenceforth made the 

 reflex, or, as he subsequently called it, the excito-motory system, his 

 chief study, and laboured incessantly in extending and consolidating its 

 province for the rest of his life; and to him belongs especially the merit 

 of successfully applying the principle to the interpretation of disease. 

 By his numerous writings and unwearied personal exertions, atten- 

 tion was awakened on all sides to the importance of the phenomena ; 

 and they soon became a prominent subject of intelligent observation 

 and earnest discussion among physiologists and medical men both in 

 this country and on the Continent, where Professor Miiller had inde- 

 pendently and almost simultaneously arrived at results in great part 

 similar to those of Dr. Hall, though he was somewhat later in publi- 

 cation. In this way the principle of the reflex function has come to 

 take its due place in physiology and medicine, and important truths, 

 previously seen or at least comprehended in their systematic connexion 

 only by a few, are now established and familar doctrines in science. 



Four years after the date of his first memoir, Dr. Hall communi- 

 cated a second paper to the Royal Society, which formed the subject 

 of the Bakerian Lecture for 1837. In this paper, which was entitled 

 " On the True Spinal Marrow, and the Excito-motory System of 

 Nerves," he gave a new exposition of the constitution of the nervous 

 system, on the assumption that there are special "excitor" and 

 "motor" nerve-fibres subservient to the reflex function, and dif- 

 ferent from the sensory and volunto-motory fibres, though mixed with 

 them in the same sheaths ; and that these special nerve-fibres are in 

 relation to a special part of the spinal marrow and of its encephalic 

 prolongations, which serves as a centre, anatomically blended with, 

 but physiologically distinct from, the part of the cord ministering to 



