The anatomy of the nervous system : from the standpoint of development and function / by Stephen Walter Ranson.

  • Ranson, Stephen Walter, 1880-1942.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The anatomy of the nervous system : from the standpoint of development and function / by Stephen Walter Ranson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/400 (page 11)
    PREFACE In the pages which follow the anatomy of the nervous system has been pre¬ sented from the dynamic rather than the static point of view; that is to say, emphasis has been laid on the developmental and functional significance of struc¬ ture. The student is led at the very beginning of his neurologic studies to think of the nervous system in its relation to the rest of the living organism. Struc¬ tural details, which when considered by themselves are dull and tiresome, become interesting when their functional significance is made obvious. This method of presentation makes more easy the correlation of the various neurologic courses in the medical curriculum. For physiologic and clinical neurology a knowledge of conduction pathways and functional localization is essential, and this informa¬ tion can best be acquired in connection with the course in anatomic neurology. In selecting the materia] to be included in this book the needs of the medical student have been kept constantly in mind, and emphasis has been placed on those phases of the subject which the student is most likely to find of value to him in his subsequent work. In many laboratories the head of the shark and the brain of the sheep have been used to supplement human material. The book has been so arranged as to facilitate such comparative studies without making it any the less well adapted to courses where only human material is used. During the past twenty years very considerable additions have been made to the science of neurology, and the more important of these have been included in the text. While a detailed presentation of the evidence concerning new or dis¬ puted points would be out of place in a book of this kind, whenever the state¬ ments made here differ from those found in other texts the authority has always been cited, the author’s name and the date of his contribution being given in parentheses. A full list of these references to the literature has been included in a Bibliography at the end of the volume. The terminology adopted is that of the B. N. A., which has been used, for the most part, in its English form. But in the case of the fiber tracts the Basle