NOTE VII.
Real Labours of Gall as to the Brain.
[Page 128.] Gall, moreover, was a great anatomist.
He found that the medullary substance of the brain was fibrous throughout;[209] he saw the fibres of the medulla oblongata decussate before they form the pyramidal eminences,[210] those of the corpora olivaria, &c.; that is to say, all the ascending fibres of the medulla oblongata across the pons varolii, thalami nervor opticorum, and the corpora striata, as far as the vault of the hemispheres; he saw the bundles formed by these fibres increased in magnitude at each of these passages; he distinguished the fibres which go out in order to expand in the hemispheres, from those that go in in order to give birth to the commissures: many nerves that were regarded as coming out immediately from the brain, were by him traced even into the medulla oblongata, &c.
And I repeat that all these facts, with the discovery of which he has enriched the science of anatomy, all of them are the results of a happy thought of his—the idea of tracing the fibres of the brain, or to use a common expression, of substituting in the dissection of the brain the method of developments for that of sections.
Those of Gall’s opinions which it seems ought not to be adopted, are: that in which he supposes the nerve fibres to be born (he understands the word to the letter) of the gray matter; that in which he contends that the convolutions of the brain are merely foldings of the medullary fibres, and can therefore be unfolded; that in which he compares the rete mucosum of the skin to the gray matter of the encephalon, &c., &c.
Gall had a mind which impelled him to the formation of hypotheses; and even in his real anatomy there is a decided smack of a system-author.
THE END.