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"If the brain, or some part of it, were not in a manner the fountain of sensation and motion, and more peculiarly the seat of the mind than the other bowels or members of the body; why should a slight inflammation of its membranes cause madness, or a small compression of it produce a palsy or apoplexy, while a like inflammation of the stomach or liver, or a compression or obstruction of these bowels, have no such effects?"

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Author

Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Work Title

An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals

Place of Publication

Edinburgh

Publisher

Printed by Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill

Date

1751

Metaphor

"If the brain, or some part of it, were not in a manner the fountain of sensation and motion, and more peculiarly the seat of the mind than the other bowels or members of the body; why should a slight inflammation of its membranes cause madness, or a small compression of it produce a palsy or apoplexy, while a like inflammation of the stomach or liver, or a compression or obstruction of these bowels, have no such effects?"

Metaphor in Context

If the brain, or some part of it, were not in a manner the fountain of sensation and motion, and more peculiarly the seat of the mind than the other bowels or members of the body; why should a slight inflammation of its membranes cause madness, or a small compression of it produce a palsy or apoplexy, while a like inflammation of the stomach or liver, or a compression or obstruction of these bowels, have no such effects? If the nerves were not immediately concerned in muscular motion, why, upon tying or destroying them, does the member to which they are distributed, instantly lose all power of motion and sensation? Because animals have lived with a brain so diseased, that it is difficult to conceive how it could perform its functions, or because monsters have been born without a head, which lived some short time, and had the power of motion; to conclude, I say, from hence, that the brain and nerves in perfect animals are not immediately necessary to motion and sensation, is altogether as absurd, as it would be to assert, that the heart was not designed to propel the blood through the body, because mussels, oysters, and other animals of the lowest class, have no such organ, and monstrous foetuses have sometimes wanted it, or because we are told of a rat every way healthful, which being dissected was found to have no heart.--No reasoning drawn from a few monstrous cases, can be sufficient to overthrow a doctrine founded upon the plainest phœnomena observed in perfect animals, and confirmed by almost numberless experiments made upon them. The necessity therefore of the influence of the brain and nerves towards producing muscular motion, is not to be disproved by a few rare instances of ossified, petrified, or otherwise morbid brains found in animals, which seemed tolerably healthy, and had the motion of all their muscles; since it is not more unreasonable to suppose, that the nerves may derive a fluid from a porous spungy ossified brain, than that a tree should spring out of a stone-wall; dry stone and lime being not less different from moist earth, than such an ossified brain from one in its natural state; nay the latter seems more capable of affording moisture to the nerves, than the former to roots of the tree. [...]
(Sect. I, pp. 6-8)