The intra-cranial circulation and its relation to the physiology of the brain / by James Cappie.

Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The intra-cranial circulation and its relation to the physiology of the brain / by James Cappie. 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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    account for the fact of weight may be puzzling, but the law of gravitation can be expressed with a precision that leaves nothing to the imagination. Energy is ever awake—is ever ready to respond to an appropriate stimulus. We may either say it conditions everything, or that all its own manifestations are strictly conditioned. Its all-pervading influence is shown in the tremors of the ether and in the hardness of the diamond; in the behaviour of atoms and molecules as well as in that of suns and systems. Its mode of working is inviolably fixed, and if by successful interpretation of nature its secret can be sufficiently mastered, it becomes a docile slave whose behaviour can be predicated with the great- est precision. To attempt some interpretation of nature is instinctive independently of any desire to obtain sway over its forces; to interpret correctly and to reduce to rule, if a laudable ambition, is not always an easy task. Many have been the professed interpreters; many, also, have been the methods pursued, and immensely varied has been the value of the results. The interpreter to whom the greatest licence is given is the Poet. To nature he imputes moods and will, and doing his best to place himself in harmony with these moods, he gives us his not uninteresting version of her modes of existing and working. His own imagination is his instrument of research. Ignoring reason, he yields himself up to the mood of the moment, and as