310 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1685. 



2. Raymundi Fiemsens,* D.M. Monspeliensis Neurographia Universalis, fol. Lug. 



l685. N° 174, p. 1144. 



This author divides the brain into two parts, outward and inward. He begins 

 with the crassa meninx, which he makes to be double. He denies the pia 

 meninx to have any glands, is very particular in the distribution of the vessels 

 of it, and will not allow the rete mirabile, on which he has a distinct chapter, 

 to consist of any thing besides arteries. The brain is divided into the cinereous 

 or glandulous part; and the medullary or fibrous, which from its figure and use 

 he calls the oval centre of the brain; he considers the corpus callosum as the 

 true fornix ; and having given the description of all the internal parts of the 

 brain, he gives likewise their use, founded on their structure, and so passes to 

 the cerebellum, in which he describes both the processus vermiformes, and gives 

 an account of the valvula major cerebri, &c. 



After the anatomy of the brain, he discourses on the office of the brain and 

 its parts, on the necessity and nature of the animal spirits, succus nerveus. Sec. 

 And treats briefly of the animal faculties, concluding the 1st book with a chapter 

 on judgment and reason. 



The 2d book treats of the medulla spinalis, which he considers as the pro- 

 longation of the brain, and as the foundation of sensation, motion, and nutri- 

 tion, of the parts below the head. 



The 3d book treats of the nerves; in the last chapter of which we meet 

 with observations on muscular motion. The work is illustrated by plates. 



On the Cause of the Winds and of the Change of Weather. By Dr. Garden of 



Aberdeen. N° 175, p. 1148. 



There are continual easterly winds under the line called breezes; and there> 



* In that difficult department of anatonay, the brain and nerves, Vieussens (who was physician to 

 the hospital at Montpellier) acquired great and deserved celebrity. Many of his predecessors, as 

 Halier observes, had in their investigation of these parts, been content with dissections of the qua- 

 druped race; but this anatomist justly conceived that in different animals the structure of these partg 

 must vary considerably, and therefore that an accurate knowledge of them, in relation to ourselves, 

 ■was only to be acquired by dissections of the human subject ; from which he accordingly took all his 

 descriptions and plates. Besides the Neurographia, above-noticed, he wrote several other treatises, 

 some in Latin, others in French, viz ob fermentation and digestion, on the blood, on the structure of 

 the viscera, on the heart, on the ear, &c. ; but none of them add much to the fame which he ac- 

 quired by his first publication, and some of them abound in fancifii) and erroneous theories. A 4to 

 vol. of his posthumous works came out in 1774, from which it appears that he had paid great atten- 

 tion to morbid as well as natural anatomy ; as we find related therein, the histories of many patients 

 whose bodies be had examined after death. 



