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XXVI. On the Nerves of the Face ; being a second paper on that subject. By 
Charles Bell, Esq. Fellow of the Royal Society. 
Read May 28, 1829. 
I HAVE to beg the indulgence of the Society to some minute details of ana- 
tomy, for the sake of those deductions which can be attained by no other 
means : and that a zeal for its cultivation may be preserved among us. There 
is an obvious practical benefit derived from anatomy, but the public do not 
comprehend its importance as a science. It is to the Royal Society that those 
who prosecute this science must look for countenance in their slow and painful 
investigations. 
Nine years ago, at the request of our late President, I submitted to the 
Society a paper on the Nervous System ; in which I arranged the nerves strictly 
according to the anatomy, and illustrated the principles of the arrangement, 
by exhibiting the different functions of the Nerves of the Face. On presenting 
a second paper on the same part of the nervous system after so considerable a 
lapse of time, there will be some novelty both in the facts and in the illustra- 
tions ; yet I have more gratification in showing that after the most minute in- 
quiries in different countries, my positions drawn from the anatomy have been 
admitted, and my reasoning on the experiments, with one exception, found to 
be correct. Confident in the accuracy of my deductions from the anatomy of 
the fifth nerve, I had attributed to one of its branches a function which be- 
longs to another branch of the same nerve. The subject will form a part of 
the present paper. 
After the announcement of the facts in my first paper, the inquiry became 
interesting from its application to medical practice. I must take another 
opportunity of thanking those gentlemen who have so liberally afforded addi- 
tional proofs of the truth of my principles. I must restrict myself in refer- 
