52 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



and the latter motor fibres. He further traced the 

 nerves to their origins in the spinal cord, and their 

 terminations as aforesaid. From these observations 

 and experiments he was able to deduce the all- 

 important fact that different nerve-roots supplied 

 different groups of muscles and different areas of 

 the skin. . . . An excellent illustration of his 

 method, and of the fact that we ought not to treat 

 symptoms, but the causes of symptoms, is shown 

 very clearly in one of the cases which Galen records 

 as having come under his care. He tells us that he 

 was consulted by a certain sophist called Pausanias, 

 who had a severe degree of anaesthesia of the little 

 and ring fingers. For this loss of sensation, etc., 

 the medical men who attended him applied oint- 

 ments of various kinds to the affected fingers ; but 

 Galen, considering that that was a wrong principle, 

 inquired into the history, and found that while the 

 patient was driving in his chariot he had accident- 

 ally fallen out and struck his spine at the junction 

 of the cervical and dorsal regions. Galen recog- 

 nised that he had to do with a traumatism affecting 

 the eighth cervical and first dorsal nerve ; therefore, 

 he says, he ordered that the ointments should be 

 taken off the hand and placed over the spinal 

 column, so as to treat the really affected part, and 

 not apply remedies to merely the referred seat of 

 pain. * 



Galen, by this sort of work, laid the foundations 

 of physiology ; but the men who came after him 

 let his facts be overwhelmed by fantastic doctrines : 



* From an address on Galen, given by Sir Victor Horsley 

 before the Medical Society of the Middlesex Hospital. See 

 Middlesex Hospital Journal, May 1899. 



