HISTORY OR THE REFLEX THEORY. 
201 
allusion to Prochaska’s opinions.* Grail mentions and cites 
Prochaska, but had evidently paid no attention to his physiolo- 
gical views, since he does not even allude to them.t Picherand 
and Majendie, the two leading physiologists of France, know 
not even Prochaska’ s name. Johannes Miiller, the Haller of 
our day, had quite forgotten, if he had ever known anything of 
Prochaska; and, in yielding the priority to Marshall Hall, never 
suspected that a countryman of his own had already promul- 
gated the theory. The erudite Dr. Thomson, in 1832, the very 
year before Hall announced his discovery, in his account of 
Continental physiologists who had advanced our knowledge of 
the nervous system, never mentions Prochaska. J Nay, even 
J. W. Arnold, writing after the theory had become European, 
in giving a sketch of Hall’s predecessors, mentions Unzer, but 
says not a word about Prochaska. § 
There can be but one conclusion from these facts : the work 
which such physiologists overlooked, we may readily suppose 
was unknown to Marshall Hall, especially in days when access 
to German works was incomparably more difficult than it is 
now. "While I wholly acquit him of plagiarism, I cannot but 
think that he acted ungracefully in not recognizing Prochaska’ s 
priority when once it had been pointed out, the more so, as he 
might still have vindicated his own originality. There is 
manifest injustice in the common tendency to deprive a man of 
his claims to our gratitude by ransacking old archives in search 
of some phrase, or some forgotten theory, which reads like an 
anticipation. On this point one may say with Malpighi (who, 
by the way, is the original discoverer of many modern dis- 
coveries) that where a discovery has passed out of men’s minds, 
and is as dead as if it had never been born, he who reproduces 
it is entitled to the reward of an inventor, “ dicitur nova 
inventio ilia, quae licet fuerit cognita alicui praeteritis seculis, 
nihilominus de ea apud posteros nulla extitit memoria, quia 
cum ilia non pervenerit ad nostram cognitionem pro usa nostro, 
est tanquam nunquam extitisset.” || Very often the anticipation 
is a mere phrase, a vague guess, or a suggestion not followed 
up ; sometimes it is a real vision, but is so far in advance of 
the science of the day as to attract no notice and admit of no 
application. Nothing can be more evident than that Hooke 
and Mayow had very clearly and scientifically explained the 
phenomena of combustion and respiration ; nevertheless, when 
Lavoisier and Priestley, by similar experiments, established 
similar theories, a century later, their fame was not diminished 
* Rudolphi : Grundriss der Physiologie, ii. 1823. 
t G-all et Spurzheim : Anat. et Phys. du Syst'eme Nerveux. 1810. 
t Thomson : Life of Cullen, vol. i. 1832. 
§ Arnold : Die Lehre von der Reflex Function. 1842. 
|| Malptghi : Opera Posthuma, 1697, p. 5. 
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