THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. 
157 
** Asa proof of the zeal with which Mr. Bell cultivated surgery, 
I may instance his hurrying to Haslar after the battle of Corunna, 
and to Waterloo after that of the 18th of June, in order to study 
gunshot wounds. 
“ Still more eminent was he as a teacher of anatomy. In the 
lecture-room he shone almost without a rival. His views were 
nearly always solid, and always ingenious ; while his manner and 
language enchained the attention of his audience. Dull, indeed, 
must have been the pupil who could have slumbered when 
Charles Bell was in the professorial chair. In his hands the dry 
bones lived again, imagination clothing them with the textures 
which had once invested them. A muscle was no longer a mere 
bundle of fibres, rising here and inserted there; it was a guide to 
the surgeon’s knife in some important operation, or, kindling with 
hidden fires, seemed to betray, by the anatomy of its expression, 
the emotions that lurked within. He taught his pupils to think ; 
and, interesting as anatomy is, even if considered as a mere branch 
of natural history, he taught them to value it most of all as a 
guide to the art of healing. The time, however, will arrive when 
all the contemporaries of Sir C. Bell, all in whose ears those im- 
pressive tones still linger, shall have been swept from the scene : 
yet his fame will still live; he will be remembered as the disco- 
verer of the various functions of the nervous system. 
“ Let me be permitted to make an observation or two on the 
opinions of physiologists concerning this subject, before and since 
the publication of Sir Charles Bell’s views. 
“It is well known that each spinal nerve arises by two roots; 
and it is now generally admitted that to the anterior one belongs 
the power of controlling motion ; to the posterior one that of go- 
verning sensation. It had formerly been thought that each spinal 
nerve possessed in common the power of ruling both motion and 
sensation, and, in some cases, additional functions. This may 
be called the popular theory. Yet glimmerings of the truth had 
occasionally been forced, as it were, upon reflecting physiologists. 
For the ordinary theory was obviously insufficient to explain why 
sensation remains in a paralytic limb when the power of motion 
is lost ; and why, on the other hand, motion survives feeling in 
cases of ansesthesia. 
“ But, although it had been conceived by some that the nerves 
of sensation were distinct from those of motion, no progress had 
been made in pointing out the principle in the anatomy on which 
one nerve could minister to sensation, another to motion ; and 
the singularly original remarks of Hunter in his paper on the 
Nerves of the Organ of Smell, concerning two or more nerves 
coming from different sources to supply a single part, had fallen 
unproductive ; they had not met with a congenial soil. 
