almost entirely. I hinted to you that I was ‘‘burn- ing” or on the eve of a grand discovery. I consider the organs of the outward senses as forming a distinct class of nerves from the others. I trace them to cor- responding parts of the brain, totally distinct from the origin of the others. I take five tubercles within the brain as the internal senses. I trace the nerves of the nose, eye, ear, and tongue, to these. Here I see established connection—there the great mass of the brain receives processes from the central tubercles. Again, the great masses of the cerebrum send down processes or crura which give off all the common nerves of voluntary motion, &c. I establish thus a kind of circulation, as it were. In this inquiry I describe many new connections—the whole opens up a new and simple light, and the whole accords with the phenomena, with the pathology, and is supported by interesting views. My object is not to publish this, but to lecture it, to lecture it to my friends, to lecture it to Sir Joseph Banks’ coterie of old women, to make the town ring with it, as it is really the only new thing that has appeared in ana- tomy since the days of Hunter, and, if I make it out, as interesting as the circulation, or the doctrine of absorption. But I must still have time; now is the end of a week, and I will be at it again.”
In another (post-mark, Dec. 1807,) he says, “ I really think this new view of the anatomy of the brain will strike more than the discovery of the lymphatics being absorbents.”’
And in a third (post-mark, March 28th and 31st, 1808)—* I have been thinking of having a room
