56 



THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



chloroform or ether, but just " the opening of living 

 animals." He had also in his mind, and always in 

 it, a great dislike against the school of Magendie. 

 Let all that pass ; our only concern here is to 

 know whether these words are true of his own 

 work. 



They occur in a paper, On the Motions of the 

 Eye, in Illustration of the Uses of the Muscles and 

 Nerves of the Orbit ; communicated by Sir Humphry 

 Davy to the Royal Society, and read March 20, 

 1823.^ This essay was one of a series of papers 

 on the nervous system, presented to the Royal 

 Society during the years 182 1- 1829. In 1830, 

 having already published four of these papers 

 under the title, "The Exposition of the Nervous 

 System," Bell published all six of them, under 

 the title, "The Nervous System of the Human 

 Body." 



In his Preface to this book (1830) he quotes 

 the earliest of all his printed writings on the nervous 

 system, a pamphlet, printed in 181 1, under the title, 

 An Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain, Submitted 

 for the Observation of the Author s Friends. We 

 have therefore two statements of his work, one in 

 181 1, the other in 1823 and 1830. The first of 

 them was written when his work was still new 

 before his eyes. 



Those who say that experiments did not help 

 Bell in his great discovery — the difference between 



* This paper includes an Experimental Enquiry into the 

 Action of these Muscles, giving an account of an experiment on 

 the eye. 



