[61] Spr. i. 534.
[62] Dic. Sc. Med. xxxv. 467.
[63] Cuv. Sc. Nat. p. 385.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Cuv. p. 40.
[66] Dict. Sc. Nat. xxxv. 467.
One of the most important steps ever made in our knowledge of the nerves is, the distinction which Bichat is supposed to have established, of a ganglionic system, and a cerebral system. And we may add, to the discoveries in nervous anatomy, the remarkable one, made in our own time, that the two offices—of conducting the motive impressions from the central seat of the will to the muscles, and of propagating sensations from the surface of the body and the external organs of sense to the sentient mind—reside in two distinct portions of the nervous substance:—a discovery which has been declared[67] to be “doubtless the most important accession to physiological (anatomical) knowledge since the time of Harvey.” This doctrine was first published and taught by Sir Charles Bell: after an interval of some [464] years, it was more distinctly delivered in the publications of Mr. John Shaw, Sir C. Bell’s pupil. Soon afterwards it was further confirmed, and some part of the evidence corrected, by Mr. Mayo, another pupil of Sir C. Bell, and by M. Majendie.[68]
[67] Dr. Charles Henry’s Report of Brit. Assoc. iii. p. 62.
[68] As authority for the expressions which I have now used in the text, I will mention Müller’s Manual of Physiology (4th edition, 1844). In Book iii. Section 2, Chap. i., “On the Nerves of Sensation and Motion,” Müller says, “Charles Bell was the first who had the ingenious thought that the posterior roots of the nerves of the spine—those which are furnished with a ganglion—govern sensation only; that the anterior roots are appointed for motion; and that the primitive fibres of these roots, after being united in a single nervous cord, are mingled together in order to supply the wants of the skin and muscles. He developed this idea in a little work (An Idea of a new Anatomy of the Brain, London, 1811), which was not intended to travel beyond the circle of his friends.” Müller goes on to say, that eleven years later, Majendie prosecuted the same theory. But Mr. Alexander Shaw, in 1839, published A Narrative of the Discoveries of Sir Charles Bell in the Nervous System, in which it appears that Sir Charles Bell had further expounded his views in his lectures to his pupils (p. 89), and that one of these, Mr. John Shaw, had in various publications, in 1821 and 1822, further insisted upon the same views; especially in a Memoir On Partial Paralysis (p. 75). MM. Mayo and Majendie both published Memoirs in August, 1822; and these and subsequent works confirmed the doctrine of Bell. Mr. Alexander Shaw states (p. 97), that a mistake of Sir Charles Bell’s, in an experiment which he had made to prove his doctrine, was discovered through the joint labors of M. Majendie and Mr. Mayo.