SIR CHARLES BELL 



55 



of this method had been lost sight of, and men 

 were more occupied with logic and with philosophy. 



Then, in 1811, came Sir Charles Bell's work. 

 If any one would see how great was the need of 

 experiments on animals for the interpretation of 

 the nervous system, let him contrast the physiology 

 of the eighteenth century with that one experiment 

 by Bell which enabled him to say, " I now saw the 

 meaning of the double connection of the nerves 

 with the spinal marrow." It is true that this 

 method is but a part of the science of medicine ; 

 that experiment and experience ought to go 

 together like the convexity and the concavity of a 

 curve. But it is true also that men owe their 

 deliverance from ignorance about the nervous 

 system more to experiments on animals than to 

 any other method of observing facts. 



1. Sir Charles Bell (1 778-1842). 



The great authority of Sir Charles Bell has 

 been quoted a thousand times against all experi- 

 ments on animals : — 



" Experiments have never been the means of 

 discovery ; and a survey of what has been attempted 

 of late years in physiology, will prove that the open- 

 ing of living animals has done more to perpetuate 

 error than to confirm the just views taken from the 

 study of anatomy and natural motions." 



He wrote, of course, in the days before bacteriology, 

 before anaesthetics ; he had in his mind neither 

 inoculations, nor any observations made under 



