Examination of Dr. Carpenter's claim of priority as to the discovery of the law of unconscious cerebral action.

  • Laycock, Thomas, 1812-1876.
Date:
[cbetween 1800 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Examination of Dr. Carpenter's claim of priority as to the discovery of the law of unconscious cerebral action. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    liiw of reflex nutrition and development as the cause of physiog- nomical characteristics ; of particular types of animals ; and of the changes which species undergo, first into varieties, then through these into new species* Dr Laycock premised these statements by the remark, that what he had previously set forth were fragments of a system he was building up, and that he kept back much of his views because he did not wish to develop it prematurely and imperfectly. In the following year Dr Carpenter published an able paper On the Brain and its Physiology, in the form of a critique upon a phrenological work by Dr Noble. In this essay Dr Carpenter gave a more definite form to his doctrine of causal sensations, extendmg it upwards to the hemispheres, through tlie so-called sensory ganglia. But so far from developmg the doctrine of unconscious cei'ebral action, he showed that all ideas, to be active, must be associated with sensations or feelings of pleasure or pain, and that these have their seat in the same central axis as the corporeal sensations which he alleged are the causes of the instinctive acts.t On this occasion Dr Car- penter avoided all mention whatever of Dr Laycock's views ; yet the paper contained internal evidence that he had read the correspondence just published in the Lancet. In the British and Foreign Medical lievieiv for July 1847, Dr Laycock gave a critical review of Unzer's Erste Giicnde einer Physiologic, a remarkable work on the functions of the nervous system which he had dismterred from the mass of Ger- man literature of the last century. This review attracted so nmch attention, that the Council of the Sydenham Society re- quested Dr Laycock to translate the original treatise into Eng- lish, and also a work by Prochaska on the same subject. Dr Laycock's translations were j)ublished in 1851. In 1848 Dr Carpenter became editor of the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Beviero, which was virtually a con- tinuation of Dr Forbes' journal. The views of Unzer and Pro- chaska had a favourable influence on mental physiology; in par- ticular, they materially modified the opinions of Dr Carpenter, who now repudiated the distmct excito-motory system of Dr M. Hall. Accordingly the January number of the Review for 1850 opened with a paper from his pen, in which he expressed his * Lancet, vol. ii. (1845), p. 258. t Brit, and For. Med. Review, Oct. 1846, p. 516.