Observations on the structure of the brain ; comprising an estimate of the claims of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim to discovery in the anatomy of that organ.

  • Gordon, John, 1786-1818.
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the structure of the brain ; comprising an estimate of the claims of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim to discovery in the anatomy of that organ. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Spurzheim shewed himself quite familiar with my account of the corpus dentatum in the cere- bellum, and endeavoured by a procedure, of which I doubt not that my readers have formed a pro- per opinion, to fix the character of inaccuracy on that account, it is somewhat surprising that he should have passed over in the most perfect si- lence my description of the corpus olivare, and omitted, or forborn to exhibit, a single view of that body throughout the whole of his demonstra- tion. From this ganglion, as they chuse to call it, Drs. Gall and Spurzheim affirm that a strong an inch broad, and a sixth of an inch in thickness. Its outer half occupies the whole length of the oval eminence; and its capsule is separated from the surface of this eminence only by a stratum of orange-white matter about a twentieth of an inch thick. Its inner border reaches to within a fifteenth part of an inch of the median plane. Its capsule consists of the same brown matter as that of the corpus dentatum in the cerebelhim ; but its indentations are finer. This capsule is generally quite complete along the outer half of the body ; but towards the in- ner border I have always found several small deficiencies in it. The nucleus consists of pure orange-white matter; through which numerous blood-vessels, chiefly venous, and larger than commonly occur in the white matter, are distributed. This greater vascularity will account for its having been often mis- taken for brown matter, as well as the nucleus of the corpus dentatum of the cerebellum.