Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training and discipline of the mind and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter.

  • Carpenter, William Benjamin, 1813-1885.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training and discipline of the mind and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    133/810 (page 65)
    actions (especially iu Man) which were in the first instance initiated by the Will, come after long habit to be as truly Automatic as if they had been so originally (§ 71). 64. In the curious little Amphioxus or Lancelet, which is the lowest known type of a Vertebrate animal, there is nothing that can be properly called a Brain; and we have here one of those experiments prepared for us by Nature (as Cuvier termed them), which show that the Axial cord is the fundamental portion of the Nervous apparatus of the Vertebrate animal, as it is the first in order of development. The Amphioxus, having no eyes, has no Optic ganglia; and the Spinal cord has no ganglionic enlarge- ment, indicative of any speciality of function, where it enters the head. But the mouth is furnished with a fringe of filaments, which are probably organs of Sense ; and the ganglionic centre of their nerves may be considered as the Sensorium.—In others of the lowest Fishes having a Cartilaginous skeleton and a uniform worm-like body, such as the Lamprey, the Spinal cord has a like uniformity throughout; and the Brain consists merely of a cluster of ganglia within the skull, which scarcely bear a larger proportion to it, than do the Cephalic ganglia of Insects to the ganglia of their Ventral cord. But with the development of the Eyes and other organs of special Sense, we find the ganglionic centres of their nerves presenting a greatly increased size. The Brain of the God, viewed from above (Fig. 8, a), shows a series of three pairs of ganglia, lying in the same line with the Spinal cord : of which the first, ol, are the olfactive ganglia, or centres of the sense of Smell; while the third, op, which are the largest of all the ganglionic masses, are the optic ganglia, or centres of the sense of Sight. Between these is a pair of ganglionic masses, ch, which are usually designated as the rudiments of the Cerebral Hemispheres > but they may, perhaps, be more properly regarded as representing the bodies termed corpora striata, which, in the Brains of the higher Vertebrata, form part of that series of ganglionic masses p