415 
PHYSICS OF THE BRAIN. 
By B. W. RICHARDSON, M.D., F.R.S. 
I HAVE recently been carrying out some new researches on 
the brain, with the view to discover its several seats and 
places of function, and the Editor of this Review thinks that 
I may be able to make the nature of the research so simple 
that all who may read will follow. I do not see why I should 
not ; for, after all the terrible obscurities thrown about it, the ' 
brain is an organ not very difficult to understand. It comes 
sharply enough under the Grladstonian definition of flesh and 
blood, and when we have the courage to approach it, and look 
into it, it gives way to inspection with moderate facility. 
Thomas Willis, M.D., and his Part. 
I find in books of learning and knowledge no glimpse of 
satisfactory thought, guess thought or real, respecting the brain, 
up to the time of Thomas Willis. Willis lived in the reign of 
Charles Mutton, sometimes called Charles the Second, and Willis 
died in the same reign, his death accelerated, it is said, by a 
cruel joke of the mutton-king. I have at this moment before 
me a small portrait of this first physical philosopher of the 
brain, the man who had the courage scientifically to open the 
skull-casket and find out what was the nature of that rounded 
structure which, like a world within a man, takes in all that is 
outside the man and binds him bodily with the universe. The 
face of Willis, as it looks up at me through the long gap of two 
hundred years, is strikingly singular. It is a pensive face with 
a meaning in it, determinate to a fault, and yet with a modesty 
of expression that shows a sensitive soul behind : — the face ex- 
actly of a man who under the smart of a king’s joke resounding 
everywhere would feel acutely and break his heart in silence 
rather than reveal the pang. 
What nonsense was talked about the brain prior to the time 
of Willis, I need not stop now to state ; except one fact which 
illustrates many more. There was a notion that a common 
cold was the phenomenon of the direct distillation of brain-stuff 
through the nose, and it is wortlry of note that men of the 
