NERVOUS SYSTEM. 329 



There are great varieties in the absolute and relative amount 

 of the several portions of the nervous system. But the brain of 



physiological knowledge of the nervous system at that time, and how much 

 science owes me in this respect." (Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, t. vi. p. 318.) 

 Even in this report, Cuvier had been obliged to confess that " the most accredited 

 method of the schools, and that usually recommended in books of anatomy, 

 is to take away successive slices of the brain, and observe the appearances 

 offered by each. This is the easiest in practice for demonstration, but it is 

 the most difficult for the imagination. The true relation of parts, which are 

 always seen cut across, escape not only the pupil, but the master himself." Yet, 

 rather than give Gall the due credit of unfolding the brain from the chorda ob- 

 longata, the Committee of the Institute pretended that Varolius and Vieussens 

 had, two centuries before, done the same thing ; whereas Vieussens dissected the 

 brain from the centrum ovale, and he is declared by the Committee to have 

 practised the same mode of dissection that Varolius employed. Varolius, on 

 the contrary, began his dissection at the base, yet not in order to trace the parts 

 from the base, through the brain, but simply, he says, because the brain com- 

 pressed the several organs at the base, against the skull, especially in the dead 

 body, and rendered the ordinary mode of dissecting from above inconvenient. 

 He had so false an idea of the anatomy of the brain, that he conceived the crura 

 cerebri and cerebelli were shoots from the respective parts, and produced the 

 spinal chord : while, however, he also declares the spinal chord to be formed 

 from the cerebrum, between the hemispheres and the pons ! In truth, our coun- 

 tryman, Dr. Willis, who lived a century and a half ago (Cerebri Anatome], was 

 the first who objected to slicing, and dissected the brain from the base : but by 

 base he understood the corpora striata and the thalami ; and from these he both 

 ascended and descended to the chorda oblongata. (Rapport des Commissaires de 

 VInstitut de France, in Gall's Eecherches sur le Systeme Nerveux en general, et 

 sur le Cerveau en particulier. 



The Edinburgh Review, which we shall see viewed the whole doctrines of Gall, 

 " anatomical, physiological, and physiognomical," as a piece of thorough quack- 

 ery from beginning to end, in June, 1815, did him justice, like Cuvier, lately, in 

 a most remarkable manner, but without the generosity of mentioning his name. 

 (No. xciv. 1828.) " Even within our own time," it now says, " although many 

 great anatomists devoted themselves almost exclusively to dissecting the brain, 

 this organ used to be demonstrated by the greater number of teachers in a manner 

 which, however invariable, was assuredly not particularly useful. It was so me- 

 chanically cut down upon, as to constitute a sort of exhibition worth nothing. The 

 teacher and the pupil were equally dissatisfied with the performance, and the former 

 probably the most. The latter soon gave up the painful attempt to draw any kind 

 of deduction from what he witnessed, and disposed of the difficulty as he best could, 

 when he had to render an account of what he had^seen. Up to this day, our me- 

 mory is pained by the recollection of the barbarous names and regular sections of 

 what was then the dullest part of anatomical study, which, although often re- 

 peated, left no trace but of its obscurity or absurdity. Here an oval space of 



