five or six miles from town, and pursuing there my physiology of the brain —that which is to make me, I am convinced.” This may be called the second-sight of genius !
At length, in an Essay entitled “‘ Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain,” printed in 1811, Sir C. Bell developed some of the principles destined to exercise so great an influence on the theory of the nervous system. Having called attention to the prevailing doctrines of the anatomical schools—that the mind, by the same nerves which receive sensa- tion, sends out the mandates of the will to themoving powers—he proceeds to announce his own opinion, that the several parts of the cerebrum have different functions, and that the nerves which we trace in the body are not single nerves possessing various powers, but bundles of different nerves, whose filaments are united for the convenience of distribution, but which are as distinct in office as they are.in origin from the brain. Pointing to the fact of the medulla spi- nalis having a central division, and a distinction into anterior and posterior fasciculi, he relates how he was thereby led to make experiments, of which he describes the results, upon the anterior and posterior columns of the spinal marrow, and upon the ante- rior and posterior roots of the spinal nerves, and how he thereupon came to the conclusion that every nerve possessing a double function obtains this by having a double root.
Adhering to the important principle thus laid down, Bell next directed his inquiries to the facial nerves, and, aided by his indefatigable pupil and
