PULPY SUBSTANCE OF THE BRAIN. 341 



in active states of the organs they have more blood. Indeed, 

 during strong feelings and intellectual efforts, the brain, in cases of 

 deficiency of bone, has been seen to enlarge, experiencing a tur- 

 gescence which is common to all organs during their excitement.*! 

 In emotions, even that of grief, the head not only aches and feels 

 tight, but burns : hard study for many hours has the same effect. 

 The functions of the nervous system, like those of all other organs, 

 require a copious supply of arterial blood ; and no solid can per- 

 form its living functions but by means of a fluid supplied to it. 



Gall considers the pulpy substance of the nervous system as 

 the matrix or producer of the fibrous. It is so copiously supplied 

 with blood vessels, that Ruysch, Schallhamner, Leuwenhoek, 

 Valisneri, Vieussens, Schwendenborg, and almost all the contem- 

 poraries of Haller, pronounced it a tissue of fine vessels; and 

 Walter and Ackerman merely a prolongation of finer and finer 

 blood-vessels, an opinion that Boyer thought probable. Albinus 

 and Sommerring, however, showed by injection that a soft sub- 

 stance existed as well as the blood vessels. 1 " Now, Gall argues, 

 1. That all parts of living bodies, as is now universally allowed, 

 are gradually and successively developed that their form and 

 substance, as well as size, totally change from their origin to their 

 perfection not, as too many had absurdly asserted when he 

 wrote, that all parts pre-existed of inappreciably minute size ; 

 and he asks, how the head of the snail reproduced after de- 

 capitation, how the transformation of stamina to petals, a work- 



Five years before, he had fallen from an eminence and fractured the frontal bone 

 on the left side of the coronal suture, since which time there had been an im- 

 mense hiatus, covered by merely a soft cicatrix and the common integuments. 

 The hiatus formed a hollow, very deep during sleep, less so when he was awake ; 

 and varying according to the state of respiration, i. e. very deep if he retained 

 his breath ; much more shallow, and even converted into a swelling, by a long- 

 continued expiration. At the bottom of the hollow, I observed a pulsation syn- 

 chronous with the pulsation of the arterial system, such as deceived PetrioJi, 

 Vandelli, and others, at one time the adversaries of Haller, who all foolishly con- 

 founded it with that other remarkable motion which depends upon respiration. 



I may add, that this wound on the left side of the head had rendered the right 

 arm and leg paralytic." 



q In one such case, during the excitement of one set of organs, the collapse of 

 others was sufficient to produce a depression : and the anger of the person could 

 always be known by merely " the holes which would appear in his head " on the 

 coronal surface, where the bone was defective. ED. Phren. Journal, Sept. 1 835. 



r Gall, 1. c. 4to. vol. i. p. 235. 



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