55 



sensation and volition. Opinion was much divided as to the validity 

 of this hypothesis, and the subsequent progress of inquiry cannot be 

 said to have been on the whole favourable to it. In the same me- 

 moir Dr. Hall adduces observations and experiments to show that 

 the ordinary (but not voluntary) movements of respiration are excited 

 in a reflex manner through the medulla oblongata, and do not ema- 

 nate from that part as their primum mobile, as he had previously 

 conceived in common with most preceding and contemporary phy- 

 siologists. This second memoir was not inserted in the Philosophical 

 Transactions, which was ever after a subject of grievance with the 

 author ; but in point of fact the original matter contained in it had 

 already been made public by Dr. Hall himself in his ' Lectures on 

 the Nervous System and its Diseases/ published in 1836 ; and his 

 new experiments and amended views respecting the respiratory move- 

 ments had also been communicated by him to the Zoological Society 

 and published in their ' Proceedings ' in 1 834 : it subsequently ap- 

 peared along with a reprint of the first memoir as an independent 

 publication by the author, under the title of ' Memoirs on the Ner- 

 vous System,' 4to, 1837. 



Dr. Hall's further researches and later views in Neuro-physiology 

 are to be found chiefly in his * New Memoir on the Nervous System/ 

 1843, and his { Synopsis of the Diastaltic Nervous System/ which 

 is an outline of the Croonian Lectures delivered by him at the Col- 

 lege of Physicians in 1850. His more strictly professional writings 

 are many and valuable ; they appeared partly as independent publi- 

 cations, and partly in Journals and in Transactions of Societies ; but 

 it would exceed our limits to give even the titles of the numerous and 

 varied productions of his fertile genius, active temperament and ready 

 pen. The more important of them are indicated in the obituary 

 memoirs of Dr. Hall which have appeared in the medical journals ; 

 but we cannot thus pass over his last service rendered to the cause 

 of humanity, in the introduction of a simple and easily applied method 

 of restoring suspended respiration, which, if we may trust the posi- 

 tive testimony flowing in on all hands, has already been the means 

 of rescuing many from untimely death. 



In 1853 Dr. Hall paid a visit to America, but in the mean time a 

 severe and exhausting complaint under which he had long suffered 

 was gaining upon him, and to escape its aggravation by our less 



