526 PHRENOLOGY : OLD AND NEW. 



the Cerebral Hemispheres may be a very extended one (not 

 to speak of the still further complication brought about 

 by the communication established between the nerve cells 

 of one sense area with those of others in the same Hemi- 

 sphere, and of the probable union by means of commis- 

 sural fibres between analogous parts of the two Hemi- 

 spheres), still it may w^ell be that certain portions of the 

 surface of the Cerebral Hemispheres might correspond 

 more especially to the maximum amount of nerve cells 

 and fibres pertaining to some one or other of the various 

 senses. . . . Just as certain of the senses contribute 

 in a preponderating degree towards the buildii^* up of our 

 mental impressions and their corresponding volitional 

 results (e.g., those of Sight, Hearing, and Touch), so we 

 may imagine that these sense organs would be connected 

 internally with a comparatively wide area of cortical sub- 

 stance in each Hemisphere.* It would be fair to infer as a 

 probability, therefore, that the ' perceptive centres ' for 

 visual impressions, and also those for acoustic impres- 

 sions, w^ould have a wide-spread seat in the cerebral hemi- 

 spheres, whilst those pertaining to the gustatory and 

 olftictory senses would have a more limited distribu- 

 tion." 



With merely a few verbal alterations the views above 

 stated were put forth by the writer in papers written in 

 1865 and 1869. And simple as the notion may now seem 

 that we have a right to look for distinct ' Perceptive Centres' 

 in the cortical substance of the Hemispheres, which should 

 be in direct "structural relation with their respective sen- 

 sory nerves and lower ganglia (or * nuclei '), in or near 

 the Medulla — no mention of this kind of ' localization ' was 

 up to that period to be found in medical or physiological 



* A notion of this kind lias lately been supported also by Prof. 

 Croom Robertson in "Mind," 1877, p. 97- 



