Lectures on diseases of the nervous system : delivered at Guy's Hospital / by Samuel Wilks.

  • Wilks, Samuel, Sir, 1824-1911.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on diseases of the nervous system : delivered at Guy's Hospital / by Samuel Wilks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    for tlie very terms employed to designate the phenomena of each are as opposed as subjective and objective, and therefore not translatable into one another. The words expressive of our feelings being of so different a kind from those by which we describe outward objects, that the mere absence of a common language for the two, is not only indicative of the total inability hitherto existing to cross the gulf, but in itself contributes a sufficient barrier to any one who tries to make the attempt. All explanations involve us in contradictions in terms or in simple assumptions. In spite of this, if there be any truth in physiological researches, the intimacy after all between mind and matter is of the closest, and possibly the material process and the metaphysical expression may be more allied than we imagine. It is impossible for us to see a physical process, as of a motion in our brain cells, changing into a mental one, as the latter is alto- gether subjective, but it does not follow that there is not a material movement of the kind, which results in what we call consciousness. I think it possible to imagine a higher being looking upon the active brain of man, and seeing both the material changes in opera- tion and the resultant forces which are mental, and regarding them as one. The difficulties are in part common to all questions of organisation and functional activity, quite apart from mind and brain. For example, no one, looking at the bile, could predicate the liver from which it came, or looking at a mass of liver, would know that one of the products of its activity was the biliary fluid. I cannot conceive by what method of the minutest microscopic examination such a knowledge of the function of the liver could be ascertained. If with material substances the connec- tion between organism and function are difficult to ascertain, how much more difficult when the function is altogether subjective ? All attempts, therefore, to explain the association of mind and matter must be given in words, which are in themselves as diverse as the subjects of which they treat; in fact, to some persons any expressions used to designate material changes by metaphysical names and the converse, are simply absurd. The attempt, however? I think, is good, if it be only to show that physiologists will continue to endeavour to explain mental phenomena by a regard to the material organisation, instead of leaving them, equally inexplicable in the hands of the metaphysician. Instead, therefore, of saying that memoiy necessarily implies an immaterial agency in man's natui-e, see what speculation may do for us on the material side ; and such speculation will go on with every fresh advance in scientific discovery, until the goal be reached. I quote from two American authors, of whom their country may be justly proud. Dr Draper says that impressions made upon the brain may lie like the photo-