328 



fingers at the shoulders. Independently of contrary arguments, 

 we may demand proofs of the opinion : none are given ; and it 

 has, no doubt, been derived from the shooting of vegetables. 

 Gall's opinion is now universal. Yet, when he wrote, he found 

 no recent modern writer doubt that the spinal chord was a pro- 

 longation of the encephalon.q 



When I published my last edition, Gall's anatomy was so little 

 known, and his mode of dissecting the brain by tracing its con- 

 stituent parts so disregarded, that I felt it right to express my 

 wonder, as one of his disciples, M. Barbeguiere, did thirty years 

 ago in Berlin 1 ", that, while students were not instructed to dissect 

 limbs and trunks by slices, as we cut brawn, they should be taught 

 no other mode of examining the brain, and thus be left in igno- 

 rance of its true structure. But now his anatomical discoveries 

 are referred to in every good book upon anatomy ; and are given 

 at full length in Dr. Cloquet's Manuel d' Anatomie descriptive, 

 and the excellent Elements of Anatomy by Dr. Quain ; and his 

 mode of dissecting the brain is taught in all the best schools. 8 



*) " This was the opinion of MM. Sabatier, Portal, Chaussier, Boyer, Cuvier, 

 Fodere, Dumas, Ackerraan, Walter, &c." (Anat. et PhysioL, vol. i. p. 50.) 

 just as of the ancients, and of other moderns, except Bartholin and Vieussens ; 

 of whom the former began to doubt, and the latter, indeed, expressed himself 

 decidedly ; but then in his descriptions and figures Vieussens still represented 

 the brain as the origin of all the nerves, an inconsistency committed by Soem- 

 merring, who, while he regards the spinal chord as self-existent, declares it is 

 produced by the mixture of the medulla of the cerebrum and cerebellum. Haller, 

 Soemmerring, Blumenbach, derived the nerves from the brain and spinal chord ; 

 Prochaska, Reil, Bichat, Cuvier, even the ganglions also from the latter ; and 

 all continued to regard it as a prolongation of the encephalon. The French 

 commissioners gave way ; but Ackerman and Walter persisted ! (1. c. vol. i. 

 p. 49. sqq. 



*" Exposition de la Doctrine de Gall sur le Cerveau et le Crane, par Dr. C. H. E. 

 Bischoff; traduit de la seconde Edition de PAllemand, par G. Barbeguiere. 

 Berlin, 1806. " Is it not the height of folly to pretend to demonstrate the brain 

 accurately by destroying it in slices ? " (p. 19.) 



s We may see in a report of Cuvier's, upon the experiments of M. Fleurens, 

 after the fall of Napoleon, his admission of many of Gall's discoveries, which, in 

 order to please Napoleon, who was jealous of the German, from being vexed with 

 the honours paid by the Institute to another foreigner, our countryman 

 Sir Humphry Davy, he had previously doubted, or absolutely denied (having been 

 favourable to Gall's views till he suddenly learned Napoleon's feelings) in a 

 report presented by him and others upon Gall's anatomical discoveries to the 

 French Institute, in 1 808 ; "A report," says Gall, " which will always be 

 one of the most valuable proofs of the backward state of the anatomical and 



