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

  • Solly, Samuel, 1805-1871.
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 / [Samuel Solly]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    brain, is by commencing with the structure and functions of a nervous system in the lowest and simplest forms of animal existence, rising by degrees to the highest, carefully observing each addition of parts, and the relationship borne by these to an addition of function. By pursuing this course we shall be rewarded by finding that the encephalon, this apparently most complicated organ in the human being, is but a gradual development from an extremely simple fundamental type on one uniform and harmonious plan, and that the seeming complexity of the cerebro-spinal axis in man really arises from the great concentration, as opposed to the extreme diffusion of its component parts in the lower order of animals ; for in no particular are the higher orders more strikingly distinguished from the lower than in the concentration of function within circumscribed spaces. In following out the plan I have adopted in this work, I shall strive to avoid, on the one hand, falling into the error of attempting too minute a detail of all the various discoveries which have been made, and giving an account of all the various opinions which have been broached; and, on the other, of basing my descriptions or confining my views to the circle of my own individual researches and speculations. My constant object will be to clear the path of all unnecessary incumbrances; and, carefully arranging whatever is known upon the anatomy and physiology of the human brain, to keep in view the principle which Herschel has so concisely stated, that “ Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically arranged and digested, so as to be attain¬ able by one/5 Every honest and erudite anatomist must acknowledge that we are indebted mainly to Gall and Spurzheim for the