Sir Charles Bell
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 76
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 edition. Excerpt: ... APPENDIX. ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. BT ALEXANDER SHAW. In many parts of this work references are made to an Essay upon the Nervous System; and the last edition contained such an essay. But on examining the copy intended for the present edition, it was found that the author had drawn his pen through the essay, and had not composed another to supply its place. It cannot be doubted that he intended to reconstruct that part of the work; and as some account of his observations on the Nervous System, which bear upon the questions discussed in the volume, may be interesting, I have been requested to give a short review of his opinions. I enter upon the task with much diffidence. It is stated, in various parts of the essays, that a distinct Class of Nerves is provided, in the human body, for controlling the organ of Respiration; and that it is that class which is principally affected by passion and emotion, so as to give rise to the phenomena of Expression. In Man, the organ of Breathing is constructed in such a manner, that besides ministering to the oxygenation of the blood, its primary office in the economy, it is the instrument of Voice and of Expression, --two properties which bear relation to his Intellectual nature. In order to adapt the organ to these endowments, it is necessary that the mechanism should have a form and arrangement distinct from that in the lower animals, where it serves for purifying the blood alone; and as a correspondence always exists between the structure of the moving parts of the frame, and the nervous system, which regulates their actions, the change in the construction of the organ is accompanied with a change in the arrangement of the nerves. Accordingly, by comparing the nervous system in the inferior animals, .