MEMOIR OF MAGENDIE. Ill 



profession to wliom it was that the merit of the discovery really pertained. In 

 this there was no difficulty; but M. Magendie having abandoned the opinions set 

 forth in his first memoir, and adopted views diametrically opposite to those of 

 Sir Ch. Bell, there was no further question of priority between them ; the ques- 

 tion then presented was not to determine who had first seen, but who bad seen 

 aright.* 



" It is proper to say that if the views given by M, Magendie in his second 

 memoir on the functions of the roots of the spinal nerves had been exact, they 

 would have left us no hope of ameliorating our knowledge respecting the nervous 

 system by reasonings founded on anatomy. The fundamental part of the 

 original doctrine was that the nervous root yielding the sensation is altogether 

 distinct from that which supplies movement ;t that these properties are so different 

 in their nature that they cannot both pertain to the same nerve ; that when a 

 nerve, in its passage, possesses at once movement and sensation, it is a sign that 

 it is a double nerve, composed at its origin of two roots, one the source of sen- 

 sation, the other the source of movement; that it is not reasonable to suppose 

 that a nerve can conduct the nervous influence in two opposite directions at once, 

 as would be necessary if a nerve transmitted at the same time the motive power 

 and received the sensations. Now, what M. Magendie presents in his second 

 memoir.l as being of such remarkable exactness, tends directly to overthrow all 

 this. Each of the two roots, as he views it, can at the same time transmit move- 

 ment and sensation ; it is not true that the anterior root is exclusively for move- 

 ment, and the posterior for sensation ; the former partakes to a certain degree the 

 function of the latter, and the latter that of the former; all that can be alleged 

 respecting the distinction between the two roots is that the anterior has more 

 influence as a nerve of movement than the posterior, and the posterior more in- 

 fluence as a nerve of sensation than the anterior; that the anterior may confer 

 sensation, and the posterior movement," &c. 



Remarks of M. Magendie on lite occasion of a note of M. Flourens, "March \, 

 1847 : "I must thank M. Flourens for having given before the academy the ex- 

 planations which I asked of him in the preceding session. The greater part of 

 the facts which he cites seem to me exact ; only he interprets them in a manner 

 which I cannot admit. 



" And first, if I have maintained silence in the circumstance recalled by my 

 colleague, no one is authorized to regard it as a sort of abandonment of my right; 

 for the report made to the academy for the prize of physiology of 1841 says, in 

 so many words, that I had thought right to excuse mysef as not competent to 

 he judge and party in questions in which I was so much concerned. I pass 

 now to the researches of Ch. Bell. 



" It was I Avho first made these researches known in France. I analyzed 

 them in my Journal de Physiologic. I even signalized their originality at a 

 public sitting of the Academy of Sciences ; and if the discovery that is now 

 sought to be attributed to the English physiologist had been announced, or even 

 indicated in his memoirs, I had certainly not failed to give it the greatest promi- 

 nence and to point out all its importance. He was himself well satisfied with 

 the reception which I gave to his labors. The proof that he recognized my 

 having rendered him full justice, is the fact that, the 10th of June, 1822, he 



* All this is well enough said and very true, as long as abstraction is made of the recurrent 

 sensibility, or the latter is not known, as was the ease with M. Hell. 



t Agreed : such is in effect of the fundamental part of the original doctrine — exclusivcness of 

 action. But in truth there is something more ; there is the mobile sensibility of the anterior root. 

 M. Bell did not see it, but some physiologist would in the end have seen it, and so long as 

 some physiologist, as skilful as M. Magendie, should not have discovered the character of 

 reversion, of derivation, the fine principle of exclusivcness could not have been admissible. 



t In this second memoir, M. Magendie is mistaken; but how fortunate the mistake (.felix 

 culpa) which leads us to the discovery of recurrent sensibility! (See further on what' I say 

 under the title of Conclusion.) 



