Physiological psychology : a case of suspension of the mental faculties, of the powers of speech, and special senses, with the exception of sight and touch, continuing for many months : with a commentary on some of the more important of its bearings, upon the philosophy of the human mind, and the physiological psychology of man / by Robert Dunn.

  • Dunn, Robert, 1799-1877.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiological psychology : a case of suspension of the mental faculties, of the powers of speech, and special senses, with the exception of sight and touch, continuing for many months : with a commentary on some of the more important of its bearings, upon the philosophy of the human mind, and the physiological psychology of man / by Robert Dunn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    dating ideas, she had lost; she could neither smell nor taste, speak nor hear. “But she could see; her sensibility to touch was markedly acute; emotional feelings, particularly of fear, were most readily excited; she had the free use of her locomotive powers; and hence it may he inferred, on the authority and from the deduc- tions of my friends Dr. Todd and Mr. Bowman, of King’s Col- lege, as set forth in their truly valuable work on the Physiolo- gical Anatomy of Man, the second part of which is just pub- lished, on Innervation,—that the following parts of the great nervous centres maintained their integrity, as they retained their functional power. “1. The corpora quadrigemina, as the special ganglia of vision, and, with them, the grey matter of the mesocephale, as the centres of emotional actions. “ 2. The optic thalami, the principal foci of sensibility, and the corpora olivaria, and the grey matter of the posterior horns of the spinal ganglia, as the centres of sensation. “ 3. The corpora striata, the seat of volition, the accumula- tions of grey matter in the medulla oblongata, the locus niger, and the grey matter of the anterior horns of the spinal ganglia, as the centres of voluntary motion. “4. The cerebellum, as the co-ordinator of voluntary locomo- tive actions. “ But as the mental faculties, the powers of speech, and the special senses of taste, smell, and hearing, after the first fit, were in abeyance, it necessarily follows that there was a dis- turbance of the integrity of other portions of the brain, through which these functional powers are manifested. And, whatever may have been the exciting cause and precise nature of the fit, the arrest and suspension of the faculties 'which followed indi- cate an abnormal change, or disturbance, in that vast sheet of vesicular matter which crowns the convoluted surface of the hemispheres, or in the commissural fibrous structure; for ‘ the convolutions of the brain are the centre of intellectual actions, and are intimately aasociated with the mental phenomena of attention, association, and memory.’ The internal mechanism, if I may he allowed the expression, appears by the first fit to have been disjointed; and the sudden shock of another, induced under an overwhelming excitement, put it right again. ‘ Ana- tomy leads to the conclusion that the operations of the mind are associated with the convolutions. In perception, memory, the power of abstraction, imagination, all possess, as instruments of corporeal action, these folds of vesicular and fibrous matter. These parts, in the language of Cuvier, are the sole receptacle in which the various sensations may be as it were consum- mated, and become perceptible to the animal. It is in these that all sensations take a distinct form, and leave lasting traces of their impressions; they serve as the seat to memory—a pro-