GENERAL ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 551 



in regard to their functions. The perpetuation of these sense- 

 less terms, devised, many of them, at an early period of the 

 science, and the conflicting accounts given of the structure and 

 functions of the different parts of the brain, have rendered 

 the nervous system a perplexing study, from which even a zeal- 

 ous student is apt to rise despairingly, his memory loaded with 

 names, and his mind charged with very indefinite notions of the 

 structure and functions of nervous matter. Neurology within 

 the last half century, has made such rapid advances, that anato- 

 mists have become emboldened, to study the parts of the nervous 

 system in their natural order ; tracing the fibres of the brain 

 from below upwards, without reference to the artificial system so 

 long practised, of dividing it in horizontal slices, which can no 

 more teach the structure of its different parts, than would a series 

 of transverse sections of the thigh, teach us the origin, course, 

 and uses of the different muscles of that region. Following out 

 these views of late investigators of the nervous system, we shall 

 see many difficulties to disappear from the tangled subject, and 

 the whole present itself in a light much more lucid and tangible 

 to the mind. 



Of the Ganglia. 



— The term ganglion, which was originally applied to a 

 knot or rounded mass of isolated cineritious neurine developed 

 in the course of the white fibres of a nerve, may well be 

 applied, since the term has come into such common use, to any 

 isolated mass of cineritious substance, whatever its form ; 

 whether spread out in a thin layer, folded upon itself as in the 

 outer part of the cerebrum and cerebellum, or forming a long 

 cylindrical mass surrounded by the white matter, as in the 

 spinal marrow ; since the generally rounded ganglia of the 

 nerves, present themselves under all varieties of forms, and 

 thus prove that shape exercises no specific influence in regard 

 to their function. 



— Hence, the outer layers of the hemispheres of the brain, are 



now spoken of as the hemispherical ganglia,* in which the 



intellectual and moral faculties have their seat ; the cineritious 



* Solly oper. citat. 



