The nervous system of the human body. Embracing the papers delivered to the Royal Society on the subject of the nerves.

  • Bell, Charles, Sir.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nervous system of the human body. Embracing the papers delivered to the Royal Society on the subject of the nerves. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    were still undirected by any principle, and that the multiplicity of anatomical facts which continued to be discovered by the anatomists of Europe only added to the intricacy of the subject. Paletta described the anterior root of the fifth nerve, and tracing it to the muscles of the jaw, conceived it therefore to be a muscular nerve*. But did this observation diminish the in- tricacy of the nervous system, or add to it ? For example, Paletta, after the discovery of these branches of the fifth pair to the muscles of the jaw, and just as one would expect that he was about to expound the truth, adds, that for the other branches of the fifth nerve he does not know what to make of them! So that he who really knew the detail of this part of anatomy most perfectly, was most confused. It will appear in the text, that after struggling with the difficulties in the demonstration of the nerves of the body for many successive years, I had recourse to their origins to find out thei^ uses. I first took a view of the spinal nerves in all their course, and observed their exact resemblance to each other in every particular. I then by experiment proved that their roots had different powers, and that they really were what their anatomy had indicated to me, double nerves. Strengthened in my conviction that the anatomy, if properly pursued, would bring symmetry out of confusion, I set about the examination of the nerves of the encephalon, and found that the fifth nerve of the brain was the only one which could bestow upon the * He saw the branches crotophiticus and buccinatorius, which he considered to be voluntary nerves, and to be the cause of trismus. b