3G 
ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
nected with the brain above, unconnected with the parts around*. 
They had a peculiar and independent function to perform, and 
here they were. 
Sir Charles Bell, to whom we all are indebted for the first 
correct views which we were enabled to form of the nervous 
system, said otherwise: he traced them, or fibres proceeding 
from them or coming to them, under the pons varolii into the 
cerebral hemispheres on either side. Most anatomists have given 
the same account. The best of the present day — the most cor- 
rect, the simplest, the clearest, and therefore the best, and whose 
work, although on human anatomy, will be very useful to you, 
and should occupy a place inyour little library — Dr. Jonas Quain, 
gives the same account of them. My friend, Mr. Percivall, 
says nothing of their origin. Girard says nothing definite, 
but when he speaks of them being covered at their origin, and 
near the tuber annulare, by a transverse band, he would lead 
us to believe that he was not aware of any connexion with, or 
derivation from, the brain. I must acknowledge that, after re- 
peated dissection since of the brain of the horse, the ox, and the 
dog, I can trace no connexion between them and the brain 
above. They are designed to discharge a peculiar office, and 
they spring at once, as it were, into existence in the situation 
in which they are foundf. 
Division of the Medulla Oblongata.— Well, gentlemen, I am 
supposing that you and 1 are for the first time examining this 
portion of the spinal cord. We are studying the pathology of 
it, but we cannot make any progress towards a knowledge of 
that until we have ascertained its function ; we must understand 
its use before we can tell how far or by what means that is im- 
paired or lost. We do not like experiments upon living animals, 
but, if the end justifies the means, we may occasionally have re- 
course to them, and we know not a more important point of 
physiology than the function of the medulla oblongata and the 
olivary bodies; for if we may judge from what we have already 
* See Veterinarian, vol. vi, p. 580. 
f In a most valuable manual of the Anatomy of the Brain, lately pub- 
lished by Mr. Solly, of St. Thomas’s Hospital, I am much gratified to find 
a confirmation of this view of the corpora olivaria. “ Some authors, 
among whom I may mention Gall, describe a fasciculus of fibres ascending 
from the olivary bodies through the pons varolii. I have not been able to 
satisfy myself of their existence. Rolando distinctly denies that any such 
fibres are to be met with ; at the same time he suggests that the fibres he de- 
scribes are most probably the anterior cords of the medulla spinalis, which 
are compressed, as it were, between the peduncles of the cerebellum and the 
olivary bodies.” This view quite agrees with mv own observations . — Solly 
on the Brain, p. 149. 
