MEMOIR OF MAGENDIE. 99 



gave rise to a counter-party. A prudish memorial was even laid before the 

 House of Commons, denunciatory of " this stranger whose offensive temerity had 

 broken through all the humanitarian harriers established by English zoophilism." 



The institute had been the supreme ambition of M. Magendic ; to reach it he 

 had combined both efforts and studies. It was a distinction which suited his 

 instincts of independence, of recognized superiority, of noble disinterestedness; 

 not so the free test of the ballot ; this suited him very little. The decisive day 

 having arrived, two of his pupils were commissioned to bring him news of the 

 result, which he awaited at borne with lively anxiety. At length one of his con- 

 fidants hurries to him with tidings of his success. " This," he exclaimed, ♦' re- 

 pays all my labor; my object in life is attained !" 



From this epoch dates the special application of M. Magendie to the study of the 

 nervous system. " The inner man," said Van Helmout, " is all nerve" — Homo 

 interior totus ncrvus. It is, in effect, through the nervous system that man feels, 

 moves, wills, perceives, that he has intellectual life ; all other parts exist only for 

 the service and support of this system. 



" If we admire," said, two centuries ago, the great anatomist Stenon,* " the 

 artifice of the fibres in each muscle, how much more must we admire it in the 

 brain, where these fibres, included in so small a space, perform each its operation 

 without confusion and without disorder !" Stenon was right. What strikes us 

 most in the nervous system is the marvellous artifice with which all is there 

 arranged. The fibres, springing from the brain, in their prolongation form the 

 spinal marrow ; in detaching themselves, by distinct fascicles, from each side of 

 the trunk, they furnish successively all the nerves of the body; twenty times 

 they become associated, as often separated ; some run parallel with, others cross 

 one another; all is united and all distinct; everything touches, and nothing is 

 confounded ; each fibre preserves its special play, its proper function ; nowhere 

 is there disorder; and from the most intimate connection of the constituent 

 elements of the organ results the free exercise of all the faculties. How abysmal 

 a depth ! and, in man himself, what subject more worthy of the meditations of 

 man ! 



Hence the first and perhaps the most ingenious, the most inventive of physi- 

 ologists, Galen, seems to have concentrated for this great study all that he pos- 

 sessed of penetration, of ardor, of critical discrimination. He blames Hippocrates 

 for having confounded the nerves with the tendons; Aristotle for having taken 

 the heart as the origin of the nerves, an error which he seems to impute to him 

 as a crime, [crimini dandum.) Aristotle had founded his opinion of the heart, 

 thus assumed to be the origin of the nerves, on the appearance of certain parts. 

 "But how long, oh, excellent Aristotle," exclaims Galen, "has it been the rule 

 to judge of the parts by their appearance ] It is by their uses, their properties, 

 their functions, and by these alone, that we must judge of them." Galen was 

 the first to distinguish clearly the nerves from the tendons ; the first to see the 

 true origin of the nerves ; it was he who first proposed the problem of the sepa- 

 rate loss of sensation and of movement :\ a fundamental problem which it was 

 reserved for our own age to propound anew and to solve. 



* I quote the entire passaj^e: "We are sure that wherever there are fibres in the body, 

 they iiiiiintain a certain correspondence with one another. If the substance of the brain be 

 everywhere fibrous, as in efiect it appears to be in several parts, it must needs be admitted 

 that the disposition of these fibres is arranged with great art, since the diversity of all our 

 sensations and all our movements depends on them. We admire the artifice of the fibres in 

 each muscle; how much more must we admire it in the brain, where these fibres, enclosed 

 in so small a space, perform each its own operation without confusion and without disorder!" 

 Disr.oUTS sur I' Anatomic du Certeau, lit par M. IStcnon dans unc assemblee chcz M. Thecenot, en 

 1668. 



t Ubi vera pars aliqua convulsa est, Sfc. " When any part is convulsed, it must needs be 

 that the nerve appropriated for its movement, or the mus(;le, is affected. Hence if we found 

 our practice on the anatomy of the nerves, proceeding to the several parts, wo shall more 

 successfully treat their loss, whether of sense or of motion. These, however, were not dis* 



