Emanuel Swedenborg's Investigations in Natural Science and the Basis for His Statements Concerning the Functions of the Brain

by Martin Ramström

ON THE CENTRES OF THE VEGETATIVE FUNCTIONS.

With regard to the function of the brain, Swedenborg, in the first place, made the distinction that the cerebrum regulates the psychic, and the cerebellum the vegetative functions.

Many different opinions prevailed in Swedenborg’s time concerning this question. Some investigators considered that the vegetative as well as the psychical functions stood under the direct control of the cerebrum; others that the centres of vegetative life were separated from those of psychic life and had not, like these, their place in the cerebrum. And Swedenborg adopted the latter opinion, primarily for the following reasons:

1) Experiments on animals had brought to light the fact that respiration and the action of the heart continued for a time even after the hemispheres of the cerebrum (in dogs) had been separated from their connection with the cerebellum and medulla oblongata, indeed, even if the hemispheres of the cerebrum (in dogs) had been extirpated.[53] He was also led to the same conclusion by

2) Certain teratological and pathological anatomical experiences, which he had gathered from his studies of books. He advances cases described by Wepfer, Tyson and Ridley, Manget, Kerkring, Morgagni, and others, which showed that although the cerebrum had occasionally been entirely or in part missing in foetuses, yet these deformed foetuses could nevertheless live a shorter or longer time after birth. And in agreement with Tulpius he calls attention to the great deformation of the cerebrum in the case of hydrocephals. In close connection with this he gives accounts (from Vallisnieri and others) of extreme cases of petrifications in the brain, regarding which one must suppose that when the cerebrum gradually lost its functions and the vegetative vital functions nevertheless continued for a time, these must then have been regulated by the remaining parts of the central nervous system, that is, by the cerebellum, medulla oblongata and the spinal cord. (See Œc. R. A. I., Nos. 573, 574 et seqq.).

From these experiments and discoveries it was thus evident to Swedenborg that the centres for vegetative life are not to be sought for in the cerebrum.

As was said, he located them instead in the cerebellum, and the reason for this seems in brief to have been the following: Manget and Vieussens had described a number of experiments on animals which were said to have proved that after lesions of the cerebellum respiration and the action of the heart at once ceased.[54] The injuries in these experiments had evidently extended more deeply than the descriptions recount, by which the false conclusion in regard to the cerebellum is explained. It was probably because of such misleading experiments as these that Swedenborg’s highly esteemed contemporary, Hermann Boerhaave, (1668-1737), held the same opinion that the vegetative vital functions are regulated by the cerebellum.[55] However, the Englishman Thomas Willis, (1622-1675), had come nearer the truth, when, in a very guarded statement, he connected these functions with both the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata.[56] And when Swedenborg chose his position on the question he seems to have been influenced by both of these authors, and received the opinion that the cerebellum was the main centre of vegetative life, making, however, the important addition, that the medulla oblongata, as for that matter also the spinal cord, are secondary centres, subordinated to the cerebrum and cerebellum.[57] This addition was based upon a conclusion which Swedenborg had drawn, among other things, from the teratological and pathologic-anatomical observations and from comparative anatomy, but there is no occasion for entering into this more closely in this connection.

After Swedenborg had, however, upon the grounds alluded to, separated the centres for the vegetative life-functions from the cerebrum, there lay before him the localization of the psychical functions; and, as to them, Swedenborg located the centres of the sensory portion of the soul’s activity in the cortex of the cerebrum.[58]