11 G UR seller's memoir of the 



ing the impression." Here one would suppose that the reflexion takes place 

 without the brain being reached, because of a connection between the afferent 

 and the efferent nerve fibrils concerned ; and if that be not the case, it must be 

 owing to something like " induced contraction" for example, to the tis nertosn 

 of the afferent fibril being communicated to the efferent fibril. Be this as it 

 may, it does not appear to have been observed by most authors, any more than 

 by Prochaska, that Unzer maintained the idea of the nerve-fibrils being isolated 

 from their origin to their termination. 



Whytt's statement on this point is clear and distinct. It was not. however, 

 published sooner than the year 17G4. It is not impossible that he learned this 

 supposition from Albinus, when he studied at Leyden ; but it is not contained in 

 any of the published works of Albinus. Nor could it have been, as has been 

 asserted, an early received idea of the Boerhaavean School ; for it is not referred 

 to in BoERHAAVE's Institutes, — not even in the form of a question, — amidst the 

 host of questions, where it could not but have had a place, if it had ever stood 

 among his speculations. In the manuscript notes of George Young's lectures, 

 taken by Whytt before he went to Leyden, the nervous fibrils are spoken of as 

 communicating " to appearance," as if the question of their isolation had been 

 already raised at Edinburgh. Sir William Hamilton, the late Professor of Logic, 

 in one of his elaborate notes to his edition of Reid's Works, in which he re- 

 proaches modern physiologists with their ignorance of what had been done by 

 their early predecessors, Avith respect to the minute anatomy of the nervous 

 system, ascribes the origin and elucidation of the idea of the complete isolation 

 of the fibrils of the nerves to Albinus, on the authority of two manuscript copies 

 of his lectures, one taken in the year 1741, the other some years later. The ridicule 

 which Sir William throws on Muller, for the belief that he, in 1830, liad first 

 estahlishcd the fact of the primitive fibres of the cerebro- spinal nerves being 

 isolated and distinct, from their origin to their termination, would have been 

 hardly deserved, had there been no record of any previous belief in that fact but 

 the two manuscript copies of the lectures of Albinus, of which Sir William 

 enjoyed the monopoly. It could hardly be that Muller had never heard of the 

 idea till that time. This is not what he means, but that he had established as 

 a fact, what was before only a probable conjecture, of which Whytt was the 

 reputed author. Of Whytt, Sir Willia^i makes no mention, though he plainly 

 took his quotation of Mijller's phj^siology from the translation by Dr Baly, in 

 which, at the foot of the same page, he must have seen the note by that much 

 lamented physician (whose recent terrible death still makes the flesh creep), to 

 the effect that Whytt taught the same view seventy years before. 



A minute detail of the progress of the subject would be unsuitable to this 

 occasion. It may suffice to indicate the names of those who have taken the 

 largest share in its advancement, — Sir Gilbert Blane, Legallois, Herbert Mayo, 



