On the Localisation of Movements in the Brain

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. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ... relation betwixt the neural process and the feeling. It is, I think, indeed convenient to make the distinction, even if it be purely artificial. The reader will observe that I did not in the paper here reprinted try to prove that the convolutions contain processes representing movement. I had for years assumed that convolutions contain processes representing movements and impressions. In fact, I cannot conceive of what other materials the cerebral hemisphere can be composed than of nervous arrangements representing impressions and movements. I have long taken this for granted when considering what is commonly called the Physiology of Mind, especially with regard to speech, as well as when speaking of convulsions and chorea. In a paper (Royal London Ophth. Hosp. Reports, Vol. v., part 4), published as far back as 1866, it is assumed throughout.* As I am anxious to show, for several reasons, that this notion had long ago become in my mind almost automatic, I will re-quote a footnote from a paper written five years ago. It had become so automatic, that although it is implied throughout that paper that the convolutions contain processes representing movements, my belief to that effect is only explicitly stated in the part here reproduced. I mention this to account for the statement appearing in a foot note. In fact, in every paper written during and since 1866, whether on chorea, convulsions, or on the physiology of language, I have always written on the assumption that the cerebral hemisphere is made up of processes representing impressions and movements. It seems to me to be a necessary implication of the doctrine of Nervous Evolution as this is stated by Spencer. * One quotation from that paper will show this. "So far as we can know...