158 
THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. 
“ The multiplicity, intricacy of arrangement, and distribution 
of the nerves, at an early period engaged the eager attention of 
Sir C. Bell ; and I have it from one who, on several occasions, 
so far back as 1806, has seen him rise from the contemplation of 
the subject with the exclamation, ‘We must make something 
out of these nerves/ Already, in 1807, he had got a glimpse of 
the fundamental principles of his subsequent researches, as the 
extracts I am about to read will shew. They are from letters ad- 
dressed to his brother George Joseph Bell, then at the Scotch 
bar, now professor of law at the University of Edinburgh (the 
talents of the family had not been quite engrossed by anatomy 
and surgery), and fortunately the letters were written before the 
revival of envelopes. The first from which I quote bears in dorso 
the post-mark, London, Dec. 5th, Edinburgh, Dec. 8th, 1807. 
“ * My new anatomy of the brain occupies my head almost en- 
tirely. I hinted to you that I was burning , or on the eve of a 
grand discovery. I consider the organs of the outward senses as 
forming a distinct class of nerves from the others. I trace them 
to corresponding parts of the brain, totally distinct from the origin 
of the others. I take five tubercles within the brain as the inter- 
nal senses. I trace the nerves of the nose, eye, ear, and tongue 
to these. Here I see established connexion — there the great 
mass of the brain receives processes from the central tubercles. 
Again, the great masses of the cerebrum send down processes 
or crura, which give off all the common nerves of voluntary mo- 
tion, &c. I establish thus a kind of circulation as it were. In 
this inquiry I describe many new connexions — the whole opens up a 
new and simple light, and the whole accords with the phenomena, 
with the pathology, and is supported by interesting views. My 
object is not to publish this, but to lecture on it, to lecture to my 
friends — to lecture on it to Sir Joseph Banks’ coterie of old 
women — for it is really the only new thing that has appeared in 
anatomy since the days of Hunter, and, if I make it out, as in- 
teresting as the circulation, or the doctrine of absorption. But I 
must have time. At the end of a week, and I will be at it again.’ 
“ In another (post-mark, Dec. 1807) — ‘ I really think this new 
view of the anatomy of the brain will strike more than the dis- 
covery of the lymphatics being absorbents.’ 
“ And in a third (post-mark, March 28th and 31st, 1808) — ‘ I 
have been thinking of having a room five or six miles from town, 
and pursuing there my physiology of the brain — that which is to 
make me , I am convinced .’ This may be called the second-sight 
of genius. 
“ At length, in an Essay entitled ‘ Idea of a New Anatomy of 
the Brain, ’ printed in 1811, Sir Charles Bell developed some of 
the principles destined to exercise so great an influence on the 
