292 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



the fifth nerve in Bell's thought was as a. whole a mixed nerve like a 

 spinal nerve, and that the portio dura of the seventh was a peculiar 

 superadded nerve subserving facial movements associated with the func- 

 tion of respiration. 



Apart from the singularity of Bell's presentation of the respiratory 

 system of nerves, his precise meaning in 1821 and 1822 is not easily 

 gathered. In the comparatively simple case of the fifth nerve, it is 

 impossible to assure oneself of Bell's real meaning. His description of 

 its functions is confused and confusing, and all that can be said of it is 

 that it does not contain the distinction commonly attributed to him of 

 the motor and sensory roots of the fifth nerve. 



Magendie's discovery was published in 1822 — dealing with the 

 motor and sensory functions of the spinal roots. 



Bell immediately claimed the discovery as his, and John Shaw for- 

 warded his claim to Magendie accompanied by a copy of the ' Idea ' 

 of 1811. 



In 1823 Bell communicated two further papers to the Royal 

 Society : — 



(3) 1823. 'On the Motions of the Eye, In Illustration of the Uses of the 

 Muscles and Nerves of the Orbit,' by Charles Bell, Esq. Communicated by Sir 

 Humphry Davy, Bart., P.R.S. Read March 20, 1823.— ' Phil. Trans. R.S .,' 1823, 

 p. 166. 



(4) 1823. 'Second Part of the Paper on the Nerves of the Orbit,' by 

 Charles Bell, Esq. Read June 19, 1823.— ' Phil. Trans. R.S.,' 1823, p. 289. 



From our present standpoint these two papers are of significance 

 only in so far as they contain a clear and correct account of the sensory 

 and motor functions of the two portions of the fifth nerve, and a passage 

 in which he protests that experiments have never been the means of 

 discovery and invokes the examples of our own great countrymen as 

 distinguished from those of France. 



Both these passages, which are foreign to the subject of the paper 

 in which they occur, are obviously inspired by the publications of Mayo 

 and of Magendie, the latter of whom is named in a footnote (p. 307). 



1. Bellingeri' s Inaugural Dissertation of 1818. — The clear under- 

 standing arrived at in England in 1822-23 concerning the motor and 

 sensory functions of the two portions of the fifth nerve was, as is 

 stated in Dr. Henry's ' Pieport to the British Association ' in 1833, 

 principally due to Mayo. Bell, to whom the discovery was subsequently 

 attributed, did not come near it in 1821, and only pretended in 1824 to 

 have done so. We have seen that his pretension was unfounded. 



But before either Mayo or Bell, and before Magendie's illuminating 

 discovery of 1822, Bellingeri in 1818 had published a clear and ex- 

 haustive account of the fifth and seventh nerves, in which their anatomy 

 and physiology are presented very nearly in accordance with our present 

 knowledge. 1 As regards the fifth nerve, Bellingeri distinguishes clearly 

 between the distribution and functions of its two portions to which he 

 refers under the designations : Portio major quinti paris vel nervus 



1 C. F. J. Bellingeri : Dissertatio Inauyvralis, 1818, 8vo, pp. 337. Augusts 

 Taurinorum excudebat Joseph Favalc. A copy of this book is in the Library of the 

 Royal Society. 



