Examination of the objections made in Britain against the doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim / by J.G. Spurzheim.

  • Spurzheim, Johann Gaspard, 1776-1832.
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Examination of the objections made in Britain against the doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim / by J.G. Spurzheim. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ing from the pyramidal bodies, and receiving an increase of fibres as they proceed, than it ■would be to say that they descend from the crura cerebri, and that part of them are prolonged to the corpora pyramidalia, while part of them are lost in the protuberance.” At all events, however, this physical appearance, which we have first described and represented, has some interest for a mere mechanical Dissector. Besides, as it is preferable to des- cribe the fifth pair of nerves and others from the medulla oblongata, rather to the tongue and organs of mastica- tion, than from these apparatus to the medulla oblon- gata ; and as in the lower animals nerves exist without brain, and in many quadrupeds a large spinal cord and small brains, we think we can describe the cerebral parts, added to the nervous mass, more properly as beginning with the medulla oblongata. But in the year 1815, when the Dissector wrote professedly on the brain, he did not know this passage of the pyramids through the pons; or if he knew it, why did he terminate the brain- proper at the upper edge of the pons, ascribe the mass of the pons to the cerebellum, and the medulla oblongata to the spinal cord ? section x. One of the most important points in our anatomical inquiries concerns the two orders of fibres, viz. diverging and converging, or uniting. The conscientious Reviewer very modestly decided on this point, stating, p. 261. “ Such is the grand system of the diverging and converging fibres of the brain, of which Drs Gall and Spurzheim are the sole inventors and pro- prietors ; a discovery truly, which, at some future time, may throw light on the most obscure operations of the 24