The human brain : its structure, physiology and diseases. With a description of the typical forms of brain in the animal kingdom / by Samuel Solly.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The human brain : its structure, physiology and diseases. With a description of the typical forms of brain in the animal kingdom / by Samuel Solly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    PREFACE. In the first edition of this Work, in 1836, T remarked that the structure and functions of the human brain are objects of comparatively shght interest to the medical student. I fear that this is still too much the case in 1847. According to the plan generally pursued in describing the brain in systematic works of anatomy, the information conveyed amounts to little more than a vain catalogue of names applied to parts, without reference to their struc- ture, their functions, or even their analogies in the ner- vous system of the lower orders of animals. Such a barren prospect as a list of names holds out but little to attract the most zealous among students, while the dry- ness of unconnected detail, and the obstacles to clear con-. ceptions engendered by the absence of everything like arrangement, almost certainly deter him from attempting to learn more than is required to prepare him for exa- mination for the diploma. It is unfortunate, indeed, that candidates for this honourable certificate are still very generally required to describe the appearances presented by the brain dissected, or rather destroyed, by the old method of slicing; a method most unphilosophical in its