VOL. in.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 328 



tion and depuration is performed by the inward structure of the glands of the 

 brain, the juice passing immediately out of them into the hollow and fistulous 

 fibres, to be conveyed by a continued course into the subjacent parts to execute 

 its several offices, as is performed by the little tubes or pipes of plants ; adding, 

 for the illustration of the original of the spinal marrow and the nerves, that that 

 marrow is a bundle of nerves, which whilst it makes up the brain, divides it 

 into two parts (by the circumvolutions of which the sides of the ventricles are 

 formed) and terminates at last in the cortex, wherein, and in whose glandular 

 grains the extreme roots of the nerves, in the smallest size, are implanted. 

 After this he proceeds to the use of the cortex, and is of opinion, that by these 

 little glands there are separated and collected those particles which nature has 

 designed for instruments of sensation, and by which, when conveyed through 

 the tubulous nerves, * the coherent parts are impregnated and swelled, and the 

 animal made sensible of the operatioHS of several objects. Moreover he offers 

 some considerations upon Dr. Willis's opinion about the production of the in- 

 ternal senses by virtue of the brain's structure; and also upon his ascribing to 

 those bodies, which he calls striata and radiosa, a twofold texture, whereof the 

 one ascends, the other descends, for the perception of the impressions of sensi- 

 ble objects by the former, and the performance of motions by the latter. Lastly, 

 he takes notice that Dr. Glissou'^ has derived the matter of the nervous juice 

 through the nerves into the brain, from the glands of the mesentery, and For- 

 tius from the mouth and intestines ; whereas, since he has observed the mass 

 of the brain made up only of a glandular cortex, and of fibres proceeding 

 thence, together with the sanguineous vessels, and not yet found any cavities 

 for receiving the chyle, and conveying it into every part of the brain ; he there- 

 fore conceives^ that all the nerves are produced out of the brain and the cere- 



* Each nerve consists of a bundle of filaments. Whether these filaments are solid or hollow, is a 

 question concerning which anatomists and physiologists have long disputed. If we may trust to mi- 

 croscopic examinations, the probability is in favour of the last-mentioned structure. They contain a 

 medullary pulp of a semi-fluid consistence. 



f Francis Glisson, one of the earliest members of the Royal Society, and one of the best anato- 

 mists which this country has to boast of, was born at Rampisham in Dorsetshire in 1597, He 

 studied at Cambridge, and was afterwards regius professor of physic there, for a long term of years; 

 till at length he removed to London, where he read lectures on anatomy before the college. During 

 the civil commotions of those days he retired to Colchester, but finally returned to London, where 

 he died in l677, aged 80. Among other treatises he wrote tlie following, De Rachitide 1^50, 

 (wherein he gives an accurate account of tlie rickets, a disease at that time new)j De Hepate l654; 

 de Ventriculo et Intestinis 1^77. In his treatise on the liver (the best of his anatomical works) he 

 gives the figure of a tube which he used for injecting tlie vessels. 



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